Road-Side Dog

In this memorable collection of poems and essays, aphorisms and anecdotes, Czesław Miłosz addresses a wide range of topics with extraordinary insight and a wry sense of humor. From reflections on youth and beauty to meditations on growing old, from thoughts on the twentieth century's dark history to the poet's place at this stage, Miłosz reveals an inimitable gift for observation in simple, beautiful prose.
Remarkable for its brevity, spontaneity, and generosity of spirit, Road-side Dog is one of the most engaging works to date from one of our greatest poets.

"I went on a journey in order to acquaint myself with my province, in a two-horse wagon with a lot of fodder and a tin bucket rattling in the back. The bucket was required for the horses to drink from. I traveled through a country of hills and pine groves that gave way to woodlands, where swirls of smoke hovered over the roofs of houses, as if they were on fire, for they were chimneyless cabins; I crossed districts of fields and lakes. It was so interesting to be moving, to give the horses their rein, and wait until, in the next valley, a village slowly appeared, or a park with the white spot of a manor in it. And always we were barked at by a dog, assiduous in its duty. That was the beginning of the century; this is its . I have been thinking not only of the people who lived there once but also of the generations of dogs accompanying them in their everyday bustle, and one night-I don't know where it came from-in a pre-dawn sleep, that funny and tender phrase composed itself: a road-side dog." --Road-Side Dog

"Road-side Dog is an elusive as well as allusive work, a book not exactly of poetry but not of prose either... A pleasure."
- Richard Bernstein, The New York Times

"An end-of-the-century diary from one of the century's most important poets."
- Christopher Merrill, San Francisco Chronicle