A curse? Only a savage when he hurts himself curses his god hidden in space.
Irony? But can the worst of jeers be compared with the irony of the most ordinary things?
Ideas? But thousands of years have passed and ideas are always no more than ideas.
Prayers? But not many today are still deluded by an eye framed in a triangle, gazing out at the world.
Scorn? But only an idiot feels scorn for that burden which he could not take upon his weak shoulders.
Despair? Do we have to imitate the scorpion that kills itself when surrounded by burning coals?
Struggle? But can an ant thrown upon the rails fight a train approaching at full speed?
Resignation? Do we suffer less when we place our head submissively under the knife of the guillotine?
Future life? Who among men looks into the secrets of stars, who can count extinguished suns and who guesses the limit of light?
Sensuous pleasures? Yet there is something in our soul that thirsts amid the pleasure and asks for something else.
So what is there? What remains for us who know everything, for whom none of the old beliefs is enough?
What is your shield against the spear of evil, man of the end of the century?
He hung his head silently.

Translated by Czeslaw Milosz

In the Sistine Chapel

The wounded bison roars from all these walls. 
That Christ - angelic cyclops - thunder falls. 
A skull in agony, accursed despair, 
Fury and groans: even the whimpers blare. 
His brush on paint sparked like an axe on stone 
And mountains powdered and their ruins moan. 
Deaf though they are, these eyes, unflinching, scan 
This work of a volcano, not of man.

Translated by Jerzy Peterkiewicz and Burns Singer