“Nowhere else than in America do they pay so well for reading poems.”
wrote Miłosz in his poem “Texas.” The next line,
“Next to my signature I put the date 2000.” scarcely seems needed
since the first one sounds so timeless. Yet my
modest experience doesn’t fit that, and I’m unsure
what “the Poor B.B.” would have said, while the price of verses,
like the stock market, climbs recklessly and falls headlong,
depending on whose crimes you’re writing about. But, no matter
where your sun rises and sets: despair is as everpresent as God.

Translated by E. Wayles Browne

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