A Confession (1985)

My Lord, I loved strawberry jam
And the dark sweetness of a woman’s body.
Also well-chilled vodka, herring in olive oil,
Scents, of cinnamon, of cloves.
So what kind of prophet am I? Why should the spirit
Have visited such a man? Many others
Were justly called, and trustworthy.
Who would have trusted me? For they saw
How I empty glasses, throw myself on food,
And glance greedily at the waitress’s neck.
Flawed and aware of it. Desiring greatness,
Able to recognise greatness wherever it is,
And yet not quite, only in part, clairvoyant,
I knew what was left for smaller men like me:
A feast of brief hopes, a rally of the proud,
A tournament of hunchbacks, literature.

This poem by Czesław Miłosz is one of my favorite poems. The older I get the better I understand the last words of this poem: this tournament of hunchbacks, what else is there? Not only literature, even love: another tournament of hunchbacks, with now and then an epiphany, the waitress's neck, herring in olive oil.

(I'm not sure whether Miłosz translated the poem himself.)