Dedicated to invisible countries

Today I found a new favourite poem, or at least it shall be one amongst favourite poems. I came upon it on the Facebook page of Susan Cain, who wrote the book Quiet - The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking. She is most definitely a kindred spirit!

This poem is so full of the Sehnsucht, the longing for the time before the banishment. I particularly love the lines 'I pretended to work like others from morning to evening, but I was absent, dedicated to invisible countries’. As the weekend begins that is where I will be. 

Nonadaptation

I was not made to live anywhere except in Paradise.

Such, simply, was my genetic inadaptation.

Here on earth every prick of a rose-thorn changed into a wound.
Whenever the sun hid behind a cloud, I grieved. 

I pretended to work like others from morning to evening,
but I was absent, dedicated to invisible countries. 

For solace I escaped to city parks, there to observe
and faithfully describe flowers and trees, but they changed,
under my hand, into the gardens of Paradise.

I have not loved a woman with my five senses.
I only wanted from her my sister, from before the banishment.

And I respected religion, for on this earth of pain
it was a funereal and a propitiatory song.

-- Czeslaw Milosz