Few tasks more difficult
Than to write a treatise
On a man who looks
At an old photograph.
Why he does it
Is incomprehensible
And his feelings
Cannot be explained.
Seemingly it’s simple:
She was his love.
But here precisely
Questions begin.
If she is tangible
So strongly present
In her skin and her dress,
her nails and hair,
Was she then a cloud
Or a river wave,
And did she return
to nonexistence?
Or, on the contrary
Is she still a substance,
A thing with duration
Separate and eternal?
— “A Photograph” Czeslaw Milosz
