approvingly of ‘‘Helene’s Religion’’: ‘‘On Sunday
I go to church and pray with all the others. / Who
am I to think I am different?’’ And yet, familiar
disappointment in the Church rises to the sur-
face as Helene says, ‘‘Enough that I don’t listen
to what the priests blabber in their sermons. /
Otherwise, I would have to concede that I reject
common sense.’’ Then, speaking for and with
Milosz himself, she continues: ‘‘I have tried to
be a faithful daughter of my Roman Catholic
Church. / I recite the Our Father, the Credo and
Hail Mary / Against my abominable unbelief.’’
Here the solid regularity of Catholic practice
faces down Milosz’s reflexive skepticism.
In ‘‘With Her’’ Milosz speaks of hearing a
passage from Scripture during Mass at St. Mary
Magdalen in Berkeley: ‘‘A reading this Sunday
from the Book of Wisdom / About how God has
not made death / And does not rejoice in the
annihilation of the living.’’ We should not be
surprised that the words catch his attention.
They directly address the key question that he
and the Gnostics often posed; how to reconcile
death and innocent suffering with the notion of a
good God. The poem continues: ‘‘A reading
from the Gospel according to Mark / About a
little girl to whom He said: ‘Talitha, cumi!’’’
Then, with an unselfconscious humility, the
poet witnesses to how he has received these
words. He writes, ‘‘This is for me. To make me
rise from the dead / And repeat the hope of those
who lived before me.’’ Here Milosz is exactly a
Christian—the scriptural word is received as a
word for him in that moment, together with all
those who have believed before him. The theo-
logical term for this is ‘‘communion of saints.’’
The poem ‘‘In a Parish’’ can serve as a third
example of Milosz’s understanding of Catholic
practice. He begins, ‘‘Had I not been frail and
half broken inside, / I wouldn’t think of them,
who are like myself half broken inside. / I would
not climb the cemetery hill by the church / To get
rid of my self-pity.’’ Here again is Milosz
involved in Catholic practice, the visiting of cem-
eteries being an especially strong part of Polish
Catholicism. But he is also bringing to explicit
expression what is implicit in any Christian gath-
ering, whether among the living or the dead—
namely, the recognition that we are all frail and
broken. This is, among other things, what brings
Christians together across differences of back-
ground. As Milosz looks at the names on the
tombs, from his own ‘‘half broken inside’’ he
begins to establish a communion with those
buried there, musing ironically on the meanings
of the names he reads: ‘‘Crazy Sophies, /
Michaels who lost every battle, / Self-destructive
Agathas.’’ When a child is born we name him or
her with an uncomplicated hope. But then the
child grows up and a sadder story must be told.
Still, Milosz sees all these lives under the sign
that, for a Christian, ultimately explains exis-
tence: they all ‘‘lie under crosses with their
dates of birth and death.’’ And in this moment
the poet feels his vocation again. He asks, ‘‘And
who / is going to express them? Their mum-
blings, weepings, hopes, tears of humiliation?’’
Milosz does not answer this question in the
poem, but his work as poet has always been to
give voice to precisely this: all the sad, neglected
stories of so many men and women.
But for Christian faith, under every cross
and every sad story lies the hope of resurrection.
It is this that Milosz ultimately expresses as he
gives voice to the dead. The poem ends with him
addressing them all: ‘‘Thus we go down into the
earth, my fellow parishioners.’’ We may call this a
sad story, but we should also note the commun-
ion expressed in going down to death with
‘‘fellows.’’ And how do we all go down? ‘‘With
the hope that the trumpet of judgment will call us
by our names.’’ Christian faith teaches that such
a call will not summon us to some vague eternity.
Instead, we shall be renewed as the particular
persons we were meant to be, expressed mysteri-
ously in our names, their deepest, truest meaning
now revealed in the ‘‘judgment that will call us by
our names.’’ And this in the ‘‘new heavens and
new earth’’ promised by the Scripture (2 Peter
3:13). And so Milosz concludes, ‘‘Instead of eter-
nity, greenness and the movement of clouds. /
They rise then, thousands of Sophias, Michaels,
Matthews, / Marias, Agathas, Bartholomews. /
So that at last they know why / And for what
reason?’’
These three poems may help us to understand
Milosz’s ultimate message in the Treatise—
namely, his choice to ‘‘sing with them,’’ his fellow
Christians, despite the fact that he is naturally a
skeptic, and despite his lengthy grappling with
Gnostic theories.
In the last stanza of theTreatise, Milosz
addresses himself directly to the ‘‘Beautiful Lady,
you who appeared to the children at Lourdes and
Fatima.’’ Such a direct invocation involved a great
risk; Milosz knew it might alienate many of hisIn Music