The need for distance: We can imagine to ourselves (I like to think about this) a youthful Herbert, who in occupied Lwów is looking through albums of Italian art, perhaps paintings of the Sienese quatrocento, perhaps reproductions of Masaccio’s frescoes. He’s sitting in an armchair with an album on his lap; maybe he’s at a friend’s place, or maybe at home—while outside the window there can be heard the shouts of German (or Soviet) soldiers. This situation—the frescoes of Masaccio (or Giotto) and the yells of the soldiers coming from outside—was fixed permanently in Herbert’s imagination. Wherever he was, however many years had passed since the war, he could hear the soldiers shouting outside the window—even in Los Angeles and the (once) quiet Louvre, in the now closed Dahlem Museum in Berlin (its collections transferred to a modern building on Potsdamer Platz), or in his Warsaw apartment. Beauty is not lonely; beauty attracts baseness and evil—or in any case encounters them frequently.
The paradox of Herbert, which is perhaps especially striking in our modern age, also resides in the fact that though he refers willingly and extensively to existing “cultural texts” and takes symbols from the Greeks and anywhere else, it is never in order to become a prisoner of those references and meanings—he is always lured by reality. Take the well-known poem “Apollo and Marsyas.” It is constructed on a dense, solid foundation of myth. An inattentive reader might say (as inattentive critics have in fact said) that this is an academic poem, made up of elements of erudition, a poem inspired by the library and the museum. Nothing could be more mistaken: Here we are dealing not with myths or an encyclopedia, but with the pain of a tortured body.
And this is the common vector of all Herbert’s poetry; let us not be misled by its adornments, its nymphs and satyrs, its columns and quotations. This poetry is about the pain of the twentieth century, about accepting the cruelty of an inhuman age, about an extraordinary sense of reality. And the fact that at the same time the poet loses none of his lyricism or his sense of humor—this is the unfathomable secret of a great artist.
(Translated by Bill Johnston)
CHORD OF LIGHT
1956
TWO DROPS
No time to grieve for roses, when the forests are burning.
—JULIUSZ SLOWACKI
The forests were on fire—
they however
wreathed their necks with their hands
like bouquets of roses
People ran to the shelters—
he said his wife had hair
in whose depths one could hide
Covered by one blanket
they whispered shameless words
the litany of those who love
When it got very bad
they leapt into each other’s eyes
and shut them firmly
So firmly they did not feel the flames
when they came up to the eyelashes
To the end they were brave
To the end they were faithful
To the end they were similar
like two drops
stuck at the edge of a face
HOME
A home above the year’s seasons
a home for children beasts apples
a square block of empty space
under an absent star
home was childhood’s telescope
home was feeling’s skin
a sister’s cheek
a tree’s branch
a flame blew out the cheek
a bullet struck out the branch
a homeless footsoldier’s song
over the scattered ash of a nest
home is childhood’s cube
home is feeling’s die
a burnt sister’s wing
a dead tree’s leaf
FAREWELL TO SEPTEMBER
The days were the color of amaranth
shining like the lance of an uhlan
Over the megaphones was sung
an anachronistic ballad
about Poles and bayonets
A tenor struck like a riding-whip
and after every verse
a list was published of live torpedoes
Who nota bene
through six years of war
were to smuggle lard—
pitiful unexploded bombs
The commander raised his eyebrows
like a mace
and chanted: not one button
The buttons mocked:
We shan’t give we shan’t give the boys
sewn flatly on to the heath
THREE POEMS BY HEART
1
I cannot find the title
for a memory of you
with a hand torn from the dark
I move on the remains of faces
faint profiles of friends
froze into hard outlines
revolving around my head
empty as the wind’s forehead—
the silhouette of a black paper man
2
living—despite
living—against
I reproach myself with the sin of forgetting
you left an embrace like a needless sweater
a gaze like a question
our hands won’t pass on the shape of your hands
we let them go to waste touching common things
our eyes reflect a question
tranquil as mirrored glass
unclouded by warm breath
every day I refresh my eye
every day my touch grows
tickled by the nearness of so many things
life purls like blood
Shadows softly melt
let’s not let the fallen perish—
a cloud will pass on their memory—
the worn profiles of Roman coins
3
the women in our street
were ordinary and good
patiently they fetched from market
nourishing bouquets of vegetables
the children in our street
—such a torment to cats
the pigeons—a mild gray
in the park there was a statue of the Poet
children rolled their hoops
and their colorful cries
birds sat on his hands
reading his silence
in the summer nights wives
patiently waited for mouths
smelling of familiar tobacco
women couldn’t answer
their kids: he’ll be back
when the city went down
they put out fires hands
pressed up to their eyes
the children from our street
met with a very hard death
pigeons fell lightly
like air shot down
now the lips of the Poet
are a flattened horizon
birds children and wives cannot dwell
in the city’s pitiful shell
in the cool down of ash
the city which stands on water
smooth as a mirror’s memory
is reflected from the river-bed
and flies to a lofty star
where the fire smells far
as a page from the Iliad
TO THE FALLEN POETS
The singer’s lips are welded fast
he mouths the night with his eyes
under a horizon’s malevolent cast
where the song ends dusk arrives
and sky’s shade covers the earth
As pilots snore in stacks of stars
you go hiding papers a silly sheaf
shedding mosaics made of words
Metaphors mock you as you flee
into a spray of righteous bullets
Your vain words are a shadow’s echo
and a wind in empty stanzas’ rooms
Not for you to hallow fire with song
you wither scattering to no purpose
the languid flowers of pie
rced hands
ENVOI
Silent one receive A shrieking bullet
lodged in his arm so he fled surprise
Grass will cover this mound of poems
under the malevolent cast of horizons
your silence will drink to the dregs
WHITE EYES
Blood lives the longest
it surges and craves air
translucence congealing
loosens the pulse’s knot
at dusk the mercury column rises
at dawn mold covers the mouth
closer and closer
temples sinking
eyelids subdued
white eyes burn no lights
broken triangle of fingers
breath taken from silence
the mother screams
rends a numb name
RED CLOUD
A red cloud of dust
summoned that fire—
the setting of a city
over earth’s horizon
just one more wall
one more brick chorale
has to be knocked down
to remove the painful scar
between the eye
and recollection
with milky coffee rustling papers
the morning workers
blew warmth into dawn and rain
resounding in flumes of dead air
with a steel cable
a swollen silence
they fish out the contraband
from space cleared of rubble
a cloud of red dust descends
the desert passing overhead
at the height of razed floors
frameless windows appear
when the last steep slope
is toppled
and brick plainsong falls
nothing will ruin dreams
of the city that was
the city that will be
the city that is not
INSCRIPTION
You look at my hands
they are weak—you say—as flowers
you look at my mouth
too small to utter: the world
—let us sway on a moment’s stem
let us drink the wind
let us watch our eyes setting
the lilies that fester smell sweetest
the shape of ruins dulls the senses
there’s a flame in me that thinks
and a wind for fire and for sails
My hands are impatient
I can
sculpt a friend’s
head out of air
I recite a poem I’d like
to translate into Sanskrit
or a pyramid:
when the stars’ source dies
we will light up the nights
when wind turns to stone
we will churn up the air
MY FATHER
My father liked Anatole France
and smoked Macedonian tobacco
with its blue clouds of fragrance
he savored a smile on narrow lips
and back in those far-away times
when he sat leaning over a book
I used to say: father is Sinbad
at times it’s bitter for him with us
upon which he set off On a carpet
on the four winds Anxious we ran
after him in atlases but we lost him
In the end he’d come back take off
his odor put his slippers on again
the jangling of keys in his pockets
and days like drops like heavy drops
and time passes changing nothing
one holiday the net curtains down
he stepped through a windowpane
and didn’t return I don’t know if he
closed his eyes in grief or never
turned to look at us Once in a foreign
magazine I saw a photograph of him
he is now the governor of an island
where palm trees and liberalism grow
TO APOLLO
1
He went in a rustle of stone robes
he cast a shadow a glow of laurels
his breaths were light as a statue’s
but his movements like a flower’s
rapt by the sound of his own song
he raised a lyre to the height of silence
immersed in himself
his pupils white as a stream
stone
from his sandals
to the ribbons in his hair
I imagined your fingers
had faith in your eyes
the unstrung instrument
the arms without hands
give me back
youth’s shout
arms held out
and my head
in an immense crest of delight
give me back my hope
speechless white head
silence—
a fissured neck
silence—
a broken song
2
I slow diver won’t touch
the rock bottom of youth
now I fish out only
salty broken torsos
Apollo appears to me in dreams
with the face of a fallen Persian
poetry’s auguries are false
it all happened differently
the epic’s fire was different
the city’s fire was different
heroes did not return from the expedition
there were no heroes
the unworthy survived
I am seeking a statue
drowned in my youth
only an empty pedestal remains—
the trace of a hand seeking a form
TO ATHENA
Through owlish darkness
your eyes
above a pointed helmet
your wisdom
carried
by thought weightless as an arrow
we run through the gates of light
from brightness into blindness
carried
on a swooning shoulder
we salute you
with bodies on a shield of shadow
when the head falls on the chest
bury your fingers in our hair
carry us high
lift your sharp and striking shape
just an instant
from under the bird’s third eyelid
let your goodness destroy us
let cruel pity be our undoing
in the empty body
opened by a spear
pour the oil
of gentle radiance
tear from the eyes
the eyelids’ scales
let them look
ON TROY
1
O Troy Troy
an archeologist
will stir your ash with his hand
and a fire greater than the Iliad
on seven strings—
two few strings
we need a chorus
a sea of laments
mountains’ clamor
a rain of stones
—how to lead out
people from the ruins
how to lead out
a chorus from a poem
thinks a poet perfect
as a pillar of salt
eminently mute
—Song escapes whole
It escaped whole
on a wing of fire
into the pure sky
Over the ruins the moon rises
O Troy Troy
The city is silent
The poet grapples with his own shadow
The poet cries like a bird in a wilderness
The moon repeats its landscape
smooth metal smouldering ash
2
They went down gorges of former streets
as if across a red sea of charred wreckag
e
and the wind blew up the red dust
faithfully painting the city as it set
They went down gorges of former streets
hungrily breathing into the frozen dawn
and they said: long years will pass
before the first house stands here
they went down gorges of former streets
they thought they would find some trace
on a harmonica
a cripple plays a tune
about willows’ braids
about a girl
the poet says nothing
rain is coming down
TO MARCUS AURELIUS
To Professor Henryk Elzenberg
Good night Marcus put out the light
and shut the book For overhead
is raised a gold alarm of stars
heaven is talking some foreign tongue
this the barbarian cry of fear
your Latin cannot understand
Terror continuous dark terror
against the fragile human land
begins to beat It’s winning Hear
its roar The unrelenting stream
of elements will drown your prose
until the world’s four walls go down
As for us?—to tremble in the air
blow in the ashes stir the ether
gnaw our fingers seek vain words
drag off the fallen shades behind us
Well Marcus better hang up your peace
give me your hand across the dark
Let it tremble when the blind world beats
on senses five like a failing lyre
Traitors—universe and astronomy
reckoning of stars wisdom of grass
and your greatness too immense
and Marcus my defenseless tears
PRIEST
to the worshippers of deceased religions
The Collected Poems Page 2