The Collected Poems

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by Zbigniew Herbert


  A priest whose deity

  descended to earth

  In a half-ruined temple

  revealed its human face

  I impotent priest

  who lifting up my hands

  know that from this neither rain nor locust

  neither harvest nor thunderstorm

  —I am repeating a dried-out verse

  with the same incantation

  of rapture

  A neck growing to martyrdom

  is struck by the flat of a jeering hand

  My holy dance before the altar

  is seen only by a shadow

  with the gestures of a street-urchin

  —And nonetheless

  I raise up eyes and hands

  I raise up song

  And I know that the sacrificial smoke

  drifting into a cold sky

  braids a pigtail for a deity

  without a head

  ON A ROSE

  To Tadeusz Chrzanowski

  1

  Sweetness bears a flower’s name—

  Spherical gardens tremble

  suspended over the earth

  a sigh turns its head away

  a wind’s face at the fence

  grass is spread out below

  the season of anticipation

  the coming will snuff out

  odors it will open colors

  the trees build a cupola

  of green tranquillity

  the rose is calling you

  a blown butterfly pines

  after you threads burst

  instant follows instant

  O rosebud green larva

  unfold

  Sweetness bears the name: rose

  an explosion—

  purple’s standardbearers

  emerge from the interior

  and the countless ranks

  trumpeters of fragrance

  on long butterfly-horns

  proclaim the fulfillment

  2

  the intricate coronations

  cloister gardens orisons

  gold-packed ceremonies

  and flaming candlesticks

  triple towers of silence

  light rays broken on high

  the depths—

  O source of heaven on earth

  O constellations of petals

  • • •

  do not ask what a rose is A bird may render it to you

  fragrance kills thought a light brushing erases a face

  O color of desire

  O color of weeping lids

  heavy round sweetness

  redness torn to the heart

  3

  a rose bows its head

  as if it had shoulders

  leans against the wind

  the wind goes off alone

  it cannot speak the word

  it cannot speak the word

  the more the rose dies

  the harder to say: rose

  ARCHITECTURE

  Over a light arch—

  a brow of stone

  on a wall’s

  untroubled forehead

  in the windows joyous and open

  with faces instead of geraniums

  where there are perfect squares

  next to a dreaming perspective

  where an ornament wakes a stream

  in a tranquil field of level surfaces

  motion with stillness a line with a cry

  trembling uncertainty simple clarity

  there you are

  architecture

  art of fancy and stone

  there you dwell beauty

  over an arch light

  as a sigh

  on a wall

  pale with its height

  in a window

  with tears of glass

  I the exile of self-evident forms

  proclaim your motionless dance

  CHORD

  Birds leave behind

  shadows in a nest

  so leave your lamp

  instrument and book

  let us go to a hill

  where air grows

  I will point out

  the absent star

  tender rootlets

  buried by turf

  springs of cloud

  rising unsullied

  a wind lends its mouth

  so that we might sing

  we’ll knit our brows

  we won’t say a word

  clouds have haloes

  just like the saints

  we have black pebbles

  where eyes should be

  a good memory cures

  the scar a loss leaves

  radiance may descend

  down our bent backs

  verily verily I say unto you

  great is the abyss

  between us

  and the light

  LOOK

  The cold blue sky like a stone on which angels sublime and quite unearthly sharpen their wings moving on rungs of radiance on crags of shadow they gradually sink into the imaginary heavens but in another moment they emerge even paler on the other side of the sky the other side of the eye Don’t say that it’s not true that there are no angels you immersed in the pool of your indolent body you who see everything in the color of your eyes and stand sated with world—at your lashes’ edge

  WARSAW CEMETERY

  That wall

  that last view

  do not exist

  lime on houses and tombs

  lime on memory

  the last echo of a salute

  shaped into a stone slab

  and a concise inscription

  chiseled in calm antiqua

  before the invasion of the living

  the dead descend deeper

  farther down

  they wail at night in pipes of grief

  they emerge cautiously

  drop by drop

  they light up one more time

  at the striking of any match

  and above ground there is peace

  stone slabs and lime on memory

  where the avenue of the living

  intersects with the new world

  under a proudly clicking heel

  the cemetery like a molehill

  gathers those who request

  a hillock of friable earth

  a slight sign from above

  TESTAMENT

  I bequeath to the four elements

  all I had in my brief possession

  to fire—thought

  may fire flourish

  to the earth I loved too much

  my body that fruitless kernel

  and to the air words and hands

  and longing superfluous things

  all that remains

  a drop of water

  let it go between

  the earth and sky

  let it be transparent rain

  frost’s fern snow’s petal

  let he who never made heaven

  return faithfully like pure dew

  to the vale of tears of my earth

  slowly crumbling the firm soil

  soon I’ll give back to four elements

  all that I had in my brief possession

  —I won’t return to a source of peace

  FOREST OF ARDEN

  Cup your hands as if to hold a dream

  just as a kernel draws water into itself

  and a wood will appear: a green cloud

  and a birch trunk like a chord of light

  and a thousand eyelids start to flutter

  speaking a forgotten tongue of leaves

  then you’ll remember a white morning

  when you waited for the gates to open

  you know this land will be unlocked

  by a bird that sleeps in a tree in earth

  but here is a source of fresh questions

  the currents of evil roots run underfoot

  so look at th
e bark’s pattern on which

  the chords of music are stretched tight

  a lutenist adjusts the pegs of the strings

  to draw a sound out of what is silent

  gather leaves: a wild strawberry patch

  dewdrops on a leaf the comb of grass

  and then the golden damselfly’s wing

  and there the ant is burying its sister

  higher up above belladona’s treacheries

  the wild pear is sweetly growing ripe

  therefore expecting no greater reward

  sit yourself down underneath this tree

  cup your hands as if to hold a memory

  like a dried kernel of perished names

  and another wood: a cloud of smoke

  a forehead marked with black light

  and a thousand eyelids stretched thin

  over the unmoving rounds of the eyes

  a tree broken like bread with the wind

  the betrayed faith of deserted shelters

  and that wood is for us and for you

  the dead have need of fairy tales too

  a clutch of herbs water of memories

  so over the pine needles and the rustles

  over the sheer spun silk of fragrances

  no matter that you catch on a branch

  and a shadow leads up steep passages

  for you will find and unlock the gate

  to our Forest of Arden.

  MAMA

  I thought:

  she’ll never change

  she’ll always be waiting

  in her white dress

  with her blue eyes

  on the threshold of every door

  she’ll always be smiling

  putting on that necklace

  until quite suddenly

  the thread snapped

  now the pearls winter

  in the floor’s cracks

  mama likes coffee

  a warm tile

  peace and quiet

  she sits

  adjusts her glasses

  on her pointy nose

  she reads my poem

  and shakes her gray head at it

  he who dropped from her lap

  bites his lip and says nothing

  so it’s a gloomy conversation

  under the lamp sweet source

  oh sorrow not to be borne

  at what well does he drink

  on what paths does he err

  son so far from my dreams

  I fed him on my sweet milk

  yet his unrest consumes him

  my warm blood bathed him

  his hands are cold and rough

  far from your gaze

  pierced by blind love

  solitude is easier to bear

  a week later

  in a chilly room

  my throat tight

  I read her letter

  in this letter

  each character stands apart

  like a loving heart

  TREMBLES AND HEAVES

  The vast space of little planets

  which consumes me like a sea

  trembles and heaves with unrest

  second hands trapped in pulses

  like mill wheels in warm blood

  trundle along the fleeting year

  the mute needle calls northward

  over a swift stream of dark water

  under transient clouds and skies

  bury nearing death in a wrinkle

  you can’t stop it with your brow

  a desert drains mind and blood

  from atoms points hairs comets

  I construct my difficult infinity

  under the mockeries of Aquilos

  I build ports for frail endurance

  THE CULTIVATION OF PHILOSOPHY

  I sowed the idea of infinity

  in the unruffled soil

  of a wooden stool

  you see how nicely it grows

  —says a philosopher rubbing his hands

  And indeed it grows

  like a beanstalk

  Another three or four

  seasons of infinity

  and it will outgrow

  even his head

  I also knocked together a cylinder

  —says the philosopher

  at the top of the cylinder a pendulum

  I am sure you see where this is going

  the cylinder is space

  the pendulum is time

  tick-tick-tick

  —says the philosopher and laughing loudly

  he flutters his little hands

  finally I came up with the word existence

  a hard and colorless word

  you gather warm leaves with quick hands a long time

  you have to trample images

  call a sunset a phenomenon

  to discover under all of this

  the dead white

  philosopher’s stone

  we now expect

  the philosopher to weep over this wisdom of his

  but he doesn’t weep

  existence after all will not be moved

  space will not melt

  and time will not stand still in its insensate course

  • • •

  An hourglass bursts

  in rough hands

  and level space

  is storied by the eye

  obediently ordered

  cones spheres cubes

  shapes from which

  a mutinous body fled

  —lie there like broken pots

  their contents evaporated—

  optimistic spheres

  a ray of astrology

  blocks of atoms

  on an avenue of wise dialogues

  the philosophers are wandering

  with the neat steps of surveyors

  confusing the absolute counting

  below a given number

  3 perhaps or maybe 1

  the universe freezes

  and cools—

  in an air heavy as glass

  fettered elements sleep

  fire earth and water

  obviated by reason

  LINES OF A PANTHEIST

  Destroy me star

  —says the poet—

  pierce me with distance’s arrow

  drink me source

  —says a drinker—

  to the dregs drink me to nullity

  let sharp eyes deliver me

  to devouring landscapes

  words meant to save the body

  may they bring me precipices

  a star will sink its root in my forehead

  the source will lend my face humanity

  and you’ll awaken silent

  in the palms of stillness

  at the heart of the thing

  TROUBLES OF A MINOR CREATOR

  1

  Whelp of the empty realms

  of a still unfinished world

  I wear my hands to the bone

  laboring over the beginning

  With a pilgrim’s foot I tamped

  earth fragile as dandelion fluff

  with an eyelid’s double-beat

  I consolidated the heavens

  and with insane imagination

  made them a shade of blue

  I cried out when real touch

  confirmed an image of rock

  and I won’t forget the time

  I tore my skin on hawthorn

  I stored names of plants of beasts

  in a chink I dug out with a finger

  then lying in the grass I admired

  the fern’s shape the peacock’s tail

  in the end I wished to take rest

  in a wave’s shade on white rock

  I wrote a natural history

  a complete guide to the species

  from a salt grain to the moon

  from amoeba to angel

  This is for you

  dear posterity

/>   so your light dreams

  will not be crushed by stones

  when night ravages the world again

  2

  You cannot pass on the knowledge

  yours is the ear and yours the touch

  each of us must build from scratch

  his own infinity his own beginning

  the hardest is to cross the abyss

  that yawns beyond a fingernail

  to discover with a daring hand

  a strange world’s lips and eyes

  —it’s good for small planets

  washed by gentle blood

  eyes closed—

  if you put trust in your five senses

  the world contracts into a hazelnut

  if you believe impetuous thoughts

  you will go on big telescope stilts

  far away into the certain darkness

  this must in fact be your destiny

  to be made without ready forms

  as one who knows and forgets

  it’s not for you to dream of a moment

  when the head will be a constant star

  not with a hand but with bundled rays

  you will greet an earth already extinct

  BALLAD: THAT WE DO NOT PERISH

  They who sailed at dawn

  but now will never return

  left their trace on a wave—

  a shell lovely as a fossil mouth

  sinks to the depths of the sea

  Those who trod the sandy road

  but never reached the shutters

  though they could see rooftops—

  will find shelter in the air’s bell

  and those who will orphan only

  a chilly room a couple of books

  an empty inkwell a blank page

  verily did not wholly die

  they whisper in wallpaper groves

  their flat heads live on the ceiling

  their paradise is made of air water

  of lime of earth an angel of winds

  will chafe their bodies in his hand

  they will

  waft across pastures of this world

  STOOL

  In the end one cannot keep this love concealed

  tiny quadruped with oaken legs

  O skin coarse and fresh beyond expression

  everyday object eyeless but with a face

  on which the wrinkles of the grain mark a ripe judgment

  gray little mule most patient of mules

  its hair has fallen out from too much fasting

  and only a tuft of wooden bristle

 

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