6. In Vain
-From A Theological Treatise byCzeslaw Milosz
Either gods are omnipotent and, judging by the world they created, not good; or they are good, and the world slipped from their hands, and so they are not omnipotent.
— The School of Epicurus
Six years old. I felt horror at the stony order of the world.
Later on, in vain, I sought shelter in colorful pictures of birds when I was the round-faced secretary of the Circle of Nature Lovers.
Charles Darwin, a clergyman-to-be, announced with regret his theory of natural selection, for he saw that it would serve the devil’ s theology.
By proclaiming the triumph of the strong and the defeat of the weak which is and has always been the devil’s program which is why he is called the Prince of This World.
Everything that creeps, runs, flies, and dies is an argument against the divinity of man.
I turned to anti-nature, i.e., to art, in order to build our home, along with others, out of the sounds of music and paint on canvas and the rhythms of speech.
Threatened at every moment, we marked our days on a calendar of stone or of paper.
Ready to be caught by a cold hand reaching out of the abyss to pull us down together with our unfinished task.
Yet we believed that some of us had received a gift, a grace, to spite the force of gravity.