This article is taken from PN Review 39, Volume 11 Number 1, July - August 1984.
Two Modern Masters: Sisson and MiloszC. H. Sisson and Czeslaw Milosz - the unlikely pairing has this much to commend it: that it rests on experience, on experiencing an identical or near-identical cadence in the one poet's verse, and in the other's. Here are four instances from Milosz's Bells in Winter, of verses which end on a cadence that readers of Sisson must surely recognize as familiar:
And if they say that all I heard was the rushing of a Heraclitean
river
That will be enough, for the mere listening to it wore me down . . .
('A Short Recess')
I would have wept over my exposed delusion
Had the custom of regretting our offenses been preserved . . .
(ibid.)
I made a pledge, what kind, I don't remember.
I wore a silver scout badge, then a gold one.
I took an oath, in mystical lodges, in underground assemblies
Swearing by the freedom of the people, or perhaps by brother-
hood . . .
(ibid.)
What beauty. What light. An echo.
You lean from the window of a train, behind the house of the
signalman
Children wave their kerchiefs. Woods flow by. An echo.
Or she, in a long dress embroidered in gold
Steps down and down the stairs, your beloved.
The so-called sights of the earth. But not many . . .
('The Accuser') ...
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