poem at night....

Can I share this poem with you? I'm not sure whether it's legally okay to put someone else's published work on a webpage without getting written permission first - in fact the longer this sentence goes on the surer I am that it's not. However, I hope I'm forgiven, for here it is.

Written by Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz and titled Gift.


Gift

A day so happy.
Fog lifted early, I worked in the garden.
Hummingbirds were stopping over honeysuckle flowers.
There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess.
I knew no one worth my envying him.
Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot.
To think that once I was the same man did not embarrass me.
In my body I felt no pain.
When straightening up, I saw the blue sea and sails.



I came upon it in a poetry book a few years ago and used a letter my Dad wrote when I was overseas to mark the page.. The letter was one of the briefest Dad had sent .. 5 lines on airmail paper. He wanted me home again. Neither the poem by Milosz nor the letter from my father had any connection to the other beyond the fact that they both felt so male to me. It was as though only a man could think and write the way they did.

Throughout his life Dad was a gardener.. Fruit trees next to the chookspen, a spinning gum behind the boys' room and a tall liquid amber in the front yard that filled the kitchen window with pale yellow light each autumn..

My husband's a gardener too.. even now when the ground's as hard as concrete something in him won't give up on the idea of trying to get a few things to grow..

On Saturday he turned 60 and we had a party here at home.. The boys carried couches and chairs outside, we borrowed a small marquee and strung lights through the apricot tree. Dan ran PC's favourite music out through an open bedroom window via speakers attached to his ipod.. Nearly 60 people came. I never expected the party to happen. Two weeks ago there were fires burning all over the state. A week prior to that Jack had died. Up until Friday I couldn’t believe the night would really go ahead..

But this post is to tell you that it did.. A great party.
I read the poem too.