"I recall only wonder"

     Pure Beauty, benediction: you are all I gathered
     From a life that was bitter and confused,
     In which I learned about evil, my own and not my own.
     Wonder kept seizing me, and I recall only wonder,
     Risings of the sun over endless green, a universe
     Of grasses, and flowers opening to the first light,
     Blue outlines of the mountains and a hosanna shout.
     I asked, how many times, is this the truth of the earth?
     How can laments and curses be turned into hymns?
     What makes you need to pretend, when you know better?
     But the lips praised on their own, on their own the feet ran;
     The heart beat strongly; and the tongue proclaimed its adoration.

     — Czesław Miłosz

Image: Oak tree in winter by Henry Fox Talbot (1842/3)