Sens / Meaning Part VI - Even if that is so, there will remain

- Even if that is so, there will remain


A word wakened by lips that perish,

"Even if" . . .Once again, that little snippet of human defiance, the petulant argument of spoiled children, the wayward darkness of free-thinkers who oppose any authority beyond their own intellect, the "if" of conditions, not verities, of finite prejudices, not eternal righteousness, still emerges, yet even if "that is so", declares the poet, he is not resigned to the despair of pessimism of a fallen world. "That is so", he reduces the patent objectivism which would feigns to reduce thrushes on branches, night and day to empty sequences, whose timeless and matchless beauty cannot be lessened, for all the hollow cynics' huffing. The poet dismisses this charges with a simple word, "that".

"There will remain," continues the poet, "a word wakened by lips that perish." "Remain", what stays over, what lasts, what endures in spite of times and seasons, reigns and deaths, wars and rumors of wars, there remains a word. The poet's words remain, certainly. Yet Milosz, a Catholic who did not abandon his faith in the face of wars, pogroms, genocide, secularism, no doubt "word" can also refer to "the Savior of the world,", the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ. This Word, His gospel, is brought to life to every person in the world by men and women who by faith live forever, although their bodies will die, their lips will perish. For the poet to write "perish" as opposed to "die" or even "pass away", "perish" implies disappearing altogether, sometimes through privation or violence, without a trace. Coming from the Latin perīre, which meant "to spend fully." The lips that speak the word will go away, not one trace of them remaining, but the word wakened will continue, an ever-present sign of the lips that are no more.