What can poetry be in the face of tragedy? Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004), one of Poland’s most eminent poets answered this question with a plain-spoken poem, which he titled Café. When he wrote this poem, Poland was experiencing a gut-wrenching moment. It was the summer of 1944, and many of Milosz’s friends and fellow poets died during the Nazi occupation and especially during the Warsaw Uprising, an brave but ultimately failed attempt waged by the Polish underground resistance to liberate Warsaw from the Germans. Milosz survived, but the event would echo in all his early war and post-war poems, haunted by survivor’s guilt.

CAFÉ

Of those at the table in the café
where on winter noons a garden of
frost glittered on windowpanes
I alone survived.
I could go in there if I wanted to
and drumming my fingers in a chilly void,
convoke shadows.

With disbelief I touch the cold marble,
with disbelief I touch my own hand.
It – is, and I – am in ever novel becoming,
while they are locked forever and ever
in their last word, their last glance,
and as remote as Emperor Valentinian
or the chiefs of the Massagetes,
about whom I know nothing,
though hardly one year
has passed or two or three.

I may still cut trees in the woods
in the far north, I may speak
from a platform or shoot a film
using techniques they never heard of.
I may learn the taste of fruits
from ocean islands and be photographed
in attire from the second half
of the century. But they are forever like
busts in frock coats and jabots in some
monstrous encyclopedia.

Sometimes when the evening aurora
paints the roofs in a poor street
and I contemplate the sky, I see
in the white clouds a table wobbling.
The waiter whirls with his tray and
they look at me with a burst of  
laughter for I still don’t know what
it is to die at the hand of man;
they know – they know it well.

~ Czeslaw Milosz, Warsaw, 1944

A Deep Dive into the Poem

Milosz chose a rather unassuming title for his poem, which serves both as its initial setting and as an indelible vision at the end. Cafes, especially the “artistic cafes” popular in many parts of Europe at that time, were important local gathering places for poets, writers, artists and intellectuals. To lose friends and fellow poets who frequent these cafes is to lose a big part of a poet’s identity and the source of encouragement and comfort that such informal friendships bring. In choosing a café as the setting for his poem, Milosz wanted to convey the searing pain that war brings to ordinary peace-loving people, the way it can destroy in a day what takes decades to nurture – passion, dedication, extraordinary gifts of human endeavor, friendships. And we can certainly feel the pain Milosz must have felt when he tried to summon the words to describe what transpired in the summer of 1944. The first three lines are one of the most dramatic and guilt-inducing introductions to a poem I’ve come across. Let’s read them again:

Of those at the table in the café
where on winter noons a garden of frost
glittered on windowpanes
I alone survived.

This simple, poignant declaration echoes the announcement in Job 1:15 made by a messenger who has witnessed a massacre: “And I alone have escaped to tell you.” In referencing this passage from the Bible, Milosz pictures himself as a messenger, the sole survivor of a massacre, who must tell what happened to others. The stanza ends with another three-line sentence, this one in the conditional tense: “I could go in there if I wanted to.” Yet he knows that if he went inside, his fingers would touch only “a chilly void” and he would only summon “shadows.”

In the second stanza, the speaker is suddenly inside the café, if only in his imagination. With disbelief, he touches “the cold marble” of the table (a metaphor for a tomb) and then touches his own hand, as if estranged from his own body. He sees his hand’s presence and his own presence in the world like in a constant state of flux, “in ever novel becoming” which he contrasts with his friends’ eternal silence. Only a short time ago, the speaker and his friends were in congenial company in the café. Now, they are but shadows, as distant as historical figures (like the mentioned 4th century Roman emperor Valentinian).

In the third stanza, the speaker lists some of the things he might do in the future, such as cutting lumber, giving a speech, making a movie, of learning to taste exotic fruits. The last activity on the list, being “photographed in attire from the second half of the century,” contrasts with the image of his dead friends who are dressed in ancient “frock coats and jabots,” giving us another imagery of how war has forever severed the ones still alive from those who have become history.

The last stanza begins with the vibrant image of a colorful evening sunset that “paints the roofs in a poor street.” When the speaker looks at the sky, he sees “in the white clouds a table wobbling.” The whiteness of the clouds reminds him of the white tablecloth in the café; he sees it again through the image of the clouds and sees with unnerving eyes, a feeling that is further reinforced by the phrase “The waiter whirls with his tray.” The next line, where his friends regard him “with a burst of laughter,” seems to add a lively detail to this whimsical scene. However, the mood changes to a somber one in the final two lines of the poem: “for I still don’t know what it is to die at the hand of man; they know – they know it well.”

Whereas Café“ begins at a café where the speaker’s friends are present only as shadows, the poem ends at another café, where the speaker is an outsider. He cannot join his friends at the table. But it is not just because his friends are no longer alive; it’s because they died “at the hand of man,” something the speaker will perhaps never truly understand. With these poignant words, Milosz finishes a monumental poem, one that puts the intimacy of friendship side by side with the cold brutality of war in a way that movingly stirs our collective conscience to denounce the madness of war for the sanctity of peace.