can my hand feel when I stroke it in the morning
—Do you know my darling they were charlatans
who said: the hand lies the eye
lies when it touches shapes that are empty—
they were bad people envious of things
they wanted to trap the world with the bait of denial
how to express to you my gratitude wonder
you come always to the call of the eye
with great immobility explaining by dumb-signs
to a sorry intellect: we are genuine—
At last the fidelity of things opens our eyes
WINTER GARDEN
Eyelids fell like leaves the tenderness of glances crumbled
the stifled throats of springs still trembled under the earth
finally the bird’s voice fell silent the last crevice in a rock
and down amid the lowest plants unrest froze like a lizard
plumb lines of trees on the horizon’s scales
a slanting ray fell on an earth come to a halt
The window is shut The winter garden froze
Eyes are teary little clouds form at the mouth
—what shepherd led the trees off Who played
to reconcile everything hand branch and skies
a phorminx sure as a dead woman’s shoulders
carried by a northern Orpheus
a patter of angelic feet over our heads
snow falls like wings shedding scales
quietness is a perfect line which brings
earth level with the constellation Libra
buds of glances for winter orchards—may love not wound us
a clutch of hair for cruel destiny—may it burn in the pure air
ALTAR
The elements went in front: water carrying silt the teary-eyed earth quick and gluttonous fire then gentle dragons of air tossing their manes opened the procession for flowers young plants and so the artist’s chisel praised the grass Green flame inhuman like a flame thrown from a ship the grass which comes when history is fulfilled and is itself a chapter of silence
a clatter of sacrificial beasts blesses moist Tellus they go fleshly and bright their necks carry heat their brows marked with horns oblivious of fate they falter and fall astonished at their own blood They cry out to you elements animals led the way the skies will part and God address you as lightning you humanity low and so very deserving of scorn yet carried high on the back of the earthly species
here the bas-relief breaks off—imagine if you can maybe the sacrifice didn’t please the immortal gods or moisture foe of endurance effaced human forms
it kept a sandal a chip of the goddess of Irony’s foot and folds of a garment from which a lovely gesture of raised arms can easily be read and that’s truly all no hands playing on the horns of sacrificial animals
you do not know what word or casual form of yours a stone wrinkle will hold—not what you think is you nor if they will choose blood and bone or an eyelash to lay in the gracious earth where statues are ripening
WAWEL
To Jerzy Turowicz
He who likened you to a marble edifice
surely had a patriotic cataract in his eye
O Pericles
your column must be embarrassed
a simple shadow warheads’ pomp
the harmony of outstretched arms
and here’s a comic brick farrago
a royal apple of the Renaissance
in a setting of Austrian barracks
maybe only at night in a fever
in a frenzy of woe a barbarian
who from crosses and gallows
learned how mass is balanced
and maybe only under a moon
when the angels leave the altar
to ride roughshod over dreams
and only then
—an Acropolis
An Acropolis for the dispossessed
and mercy mercy for those who lie
A PARABLE OF KING MIDAS
At last golden deer
quietly sleep in the glades
and mountain goats as well
their heads on a stone
aurochs unicorns squirrels
in general all game
predatory or gentle
and also all birds
KING MIDAS DOES NOT HUNT
once he got it into his head
to lay his hands on a Silenus
Three days he chased him
till at last he caught him
hit him with his fist
between the eyes and asked:
—what is best for man?
The Silenus neighed
and said:
—to be nothing
—to die
King Midas returns to his palace
but gets no pleasure from the heart of a wise Silenus
stewed in wine
he paces pulls at his beard
and asks old men
—how many days does the ant live
—why does the dog howl before a death
—how high would a mountain be
piled from the bones
of all past animals and humans
Then he summoned a man
who painted on red vases
with a black quail feather
nuptials parades and hunts
who asked by Midas
why he set down the life of shadows
answered:
—because the neck of a horse galloping
is beautiful
and dresses of young girls playing ball
are like a stream alive and inimitable
Let me sit down beside you
entreats the painter of vases
we will talk about people
who in deadly earnest
give to the earth one grain
and gather ten
who repair a sandal and a republic
count stars and obols
write poems and lean down
to pick up from the sand a lost clover
We will drink a little
and philosophize a little
and perhaps we both
who are made of blood and illusion
will finally free ourselves
from the oppressive levity of appearance
FRAGMENT OF A GREEK VASE
In the foreground you see
a youth’s handsome body
his beard leans on his chest
one knee is pulled up
his arm like a dead branch
he has closed his eyes
he disavows even Eos
her fingers plunged in the air
her hair flying loose
and the contours of her robes
make three circles of sorrow
he has closed his eyes
he disavows his bronze armor
his fine helmet
adorned with blood and a black crest
his broken shield
and spear
he has closed his eyes
he disavows the world
leaves hang in the quiet air
a branch quivers with the shadows of birds flying off
and only the cricket hidden
in Memnon’s still living hair
speaks persuasively
in praise of life
NIKE WHO HESITATES
Nike is most beautiful at the moment
when she hesitates
her right hand beautiful as a command
rests against the air
but her wings tremble
For she sees
a solitary youth
he goes down the long tracks
of a war chariot
on a gray road in a gray landscape
of rocks and scattered juniper bushes
that youth will perish soon
right now the scale containing his fate
abruptly falls
toward the earth
Nike w
ould terribly like
to go up
and kiss him on the forehead
but she is afraid
that he who has never known
the sweetness of caresses
having tasted it
might run off like the others
during the battle
Thus Nike hesitates
and at last decides
to remain in the position
which sculptors taught her
being mightily ashamed of that flash of emotion
she understands
that tomorrow at dawn
this boy must be found
with an open breast
closed eyes
and the acid obol of his country
under his numb tongue
FORTUNE-TELLING
All the lines descend into the valley of the palm
into a hollow where bubbles a small spring of fate
Here is the life line Look it races like an arrow
the horizon of five fingers brightened by its stream
which surges forth overthrowing obstacles
and nothing is more beautiful more powerful
than this striving forward
How helpless compared to it is the line of fidelity
like a cry in the night a river in the desert
conceived in the sand and perishing in the sand
Maybe deeper under the skin it continues further
parts the tissue of muscles and enters the arteries
so that we might meet at night our dead
down inside where memory and blood
flow in mineshafts wells chambers
full of dark names
This hill was not here—after all I remember
there was a nest of tenderness as round as if
a hot tear of lead had fallen on my hand
After all I remember hair the shadow of a cheek
frail fingers and the weight of a sleeping head
Who destroyed the nest who heaped up
the mound of indifference which was not here
Why do you press your palm to your eyes
We tell fortunes Who are we to know
DAEDALUS AND ICARUS
DAEDALUS SAYS:
Go on my son and remember you are walking not flying
wings are only an ornament and you tread on a meadow
that warm gust is the balmy earth of summer
and that colder one is just the running stream
the sky is filled with leaves and little animals
ICARUS SAYS:
My eyes like two stones fall straight back to earth
and they see the farmer turning over thick clumps
a worm squirming in a furrow
an evil worm severing the plant’s ties to the earth
DAEDALUS SAYS:
My son that’s not true The universe is sheer light
and earth a dish of shadow Look colors play here
dust flies up from the sea mist rises into the skies
a rainbow is now being made from noblest atoms
ICARUS SAYS:
My arms hurt father from this beating in a void
my numb legs yearn for pine needles hard stones
I cannot look into the sun the way you can father
I who am immersed in the dark rays of the earth
DESCRIPTION OF THE CATASTROPHE
Now Icarus plunges down headlong
his last image the sight of a child’s heel
being consumed by the gluttonous sea
Up above his father cries out a name
belonging not to a neck nor to a head
but to a recollection
COMMENTARY
He was so young he didn’t understand wings are just a metaphor
a little wax and feathers and contempt for the laws of gravitation
they can’t sustain the body at a height of many feet
The crucial things is that our hearts
powered by heavy blood
should be filled with air
and that is what Icarus would not accept
let us pray
THE SALT OF THE EARTH
There goes a woman
her shawl dappled as a meadow
clasping a paper bag
against her chest
this takes place
at twelve noon
in the loveliest part of town
here tourists are shown
the park with the swan
the villas with gardens
perspectives and roses
There goes a woman
with a bulging bundle
—mother what are you cradling
now she’s tripped
and sugar crystals
tip out of the bag
the woman bends down
an expression in her eye
no painter of broken jugs
could ever convey
her dark hand grabs
the spilled treasures
and she pours back
bright drops and dust
How
long
she
stays
down on her knees
as if she wished to gather
the sweetness of the earth
down to the very last grain
ARION
This is he—Arion—
the Grecian Caruso
concertmaster of the ancient world
expensive as a necklace
or rather as a constellation
singing
to the ocean billows and traders in silks
to the tyrants and mule herders
The crowns blacken on the tyrants’ heads
and the sellers of onion cakes
for the first time err in their figures to their own disadvantage
What Arion is singing about
nobody here could say exactly
the essential thing is that he restores world harmony
the sea gently rocks the land
fire talks to water without hatred
in the shadow of one hexameter lie down
wolves and roedeer goshawks and doves
and the child goes to sleep on the lion’s mane
as in a cradle
Look how the animals are smiling
People are living on white flowers
and everything is just as good
as it was in the beginning
This is he—Arion
expensive and multiple
cause of giddiness
standing in a blizzard of images
he has eight fingers like an octave
and he sings
Until from the blue in the west
unravel the luminous threads of saffron
which show that night is coming close
Arion with a friendly shake of his head
says good-bye to
the mule herders and tyrants
the shopkeepers and philosophers
and in the harbour mounts the back
of a tame dolphin
—I’ll be seeing you—
How handsome Arion is
—say all the girls—
when he floats out to sea
alone
with a garland of horizons on his head
HERMES, DOG AND STAR
1957
BAPTISM
Veterans of forty-day floods
tried by the sundering of the heavens
they who saw mountains die
and mice find salvation
now sit out on the pier
and watch the waving grain
beautiful as a waterfall
—it was a fortunate notion
to entrust hope to the birds
this made their faith strong
as a pigeon house
survivors of houses on fire
where men burn like feathers
peer into the insides of skulls
; into mindless scrolls of pink anatomy
they who know a body’s weight
say
the criminal cat and astronomer
well deserved to lie motionless
a shallow plain levels
the evil and the good
finally we with rainbow clods of earth under our lids
who discern upward motion and downward motion
sacrifices sent up
eyelids cast down
we say
they are both right
those baptized by water
those baptized by fire
will be reconciled by nothingness
or mercy
and only we against whom
the Church fathers would have written pamphlets
contra académicos
only we will meet with a terrible fate
flames and lamentation
for having received a baptism of earth
we were too valiant in our uncertainty
AT THE GATE OF THE VALLEY
After the rain of stars
on the meadow of ashes
they all have gathered under the guard of angels
from a hill that survived
the eye embraces
the whole lowing two-legged herd
in truth they are not many
counting even those who will come
from chronicles fables and the lives of the saints
but enough of these remarks
let us lift our eyes
to the throat of the valley
from which comes a shout
after a loud whisper of explosion
after a loud whisper of silence
this voice resounds like a spring of living water
it is we are told
a cry of mothers from whom children are taken
since as it turns out
we shall be saved each one alone
the guardian angels are unmoved
and let us grant they have a hard job
she begs
—hide me in your eye
in the palm of your hand in your arms
we have always been together
you can’t abandon me
now when I am dead and need tenderness
a higher ranking angel
with a smile explains the misunderstanding
an old woman carries
the corpse of a canary
(all the animals died a little earlier)
The Collected Poems Page 4