It's difficult to heap praises upon Czeslaw Milosz as he is so uncomfortable with the accolades he has but he is such pleasure to read! Here are some fragments from his new Roadside Dog.
Future
Promises for a society of the future. Innumerable varieties of mental illness, the insane walking in the streets and talking to themselves, as today in California, a widespread license in sex, drugs, and crime. Thence a need to gather in small communities united by their respect for reason, common sense, and purity of habit. Perhaps even poetry survives amid the generalized savagery, now health in the midst of sickness, just as once it was sickness in the midst of health.
Milder
With age his fierceness abated and there swelled in him, along with tolerance, an all-embracing doubt. He would sit in the dark before the stage of a puppet show and watch the chases, prayers, swaggers, repentances, recognizing in them his own nonsense.
My Ideal
My ideal of virtue: those who served the cause of the mind and preserved that passion beyond eighty and to the end.