The Collected Poems

by Zbigniew Herbert

  WEATHER

  In the sky’s envelope there is a letter for us. A vast stretch of air in wide orange and white strips. The gentle giant goes in front of us: he is rocking back and forth. He carries a shining ball attached to a thick club.

  INSCRIPTION

  1969

  IN MEMORY OF MY FATHER

  PROLOGUE

  HE

  To whom do I play? Closed shutters

  and doorknobs gleaming haughtily

  Bassoons of rain—mournful gutters

  and the rats that dance amid debris

  A final drumroll played by shells

  in the courtyard simple obsequies

  two crossed planks a riddled helmet

  and a great rose of fire in the skies

  CHORUS

  The calf turns on the spit.

  In the oven brown bread swells.

  Fires die out. Only a reprieved flame is eternal.

  HE

  And a coarse inscription on the cross

  names as short as salvos of a gun

  “Griffin,” “Wolf,” “Bullet”—who knows

  them now Red paint ran in the rain

  Afterward we washed bandages

  for years. Now no one sheds a tear

  Clinking in a box of matches—

  the buttons from a soldier’s gear

  CHORUS

  Throw out keepsakes. Burn memories and step into life’s new stream. There is only earth. One earth and over it pass the seasons of the year. Wars of insects and of people then quick death over a honey flower. Grain will ripen. Oaks will blossom. Rivers go from mountain to sea.

  HE

  I swim upstream and they with me

  implacably they return my stare

  stubbornly whisper ancient words

  we eat our bitter bread of despair

  I must bring them to a dry place

  and pile the sand into a heap

  before spring scattering blossoms

  puts them into a deep green sleep

  The city—

  CHORUS

  The city is gone

  under the earth

  HE

  It still glows

  CHORUS

  As wood decays in a forest

  HE

  A desolate place

  but overhead the air still trembles

  with their voices

  • • •

  The trench where a turbid river runs

  I call the Vistula. Hard to confess:

  this is the love that we are doomed to

  this is the homeland that pierces us

  ISLAND

  There’s a sudden island Sea sculpture cradle graves between ether and salt the mists of its paths wind around the rock and over the noise and silence voices rising Here seasons wind directions have a home and shade is good night is good sun is good the ocean would be glad to lay its bones here leaves are dressing the weary arm of the sky Its frailness amid the tumult of the elements when at night in the hills human fire chatters and in the morning before Aurora shines out the first light of the sources rises in the ferns

  DESCENT

  As if downstairs though there were no stairs for he was carrying stones too drunk on light from the distant mountains on his shoulders like the contours of wings O azure morning Bell of air with your warm tongue of dew The road leads across the bridge near a mill and the motionless grove of verdant clouds as far as the bay where an exuberant crowd of birds and people drowns the heavy clock

  AWAKENING

  When the horror subsided the floodlights went out

  we discovered that we were on a rubbish-heap in very strange poses

  some with outstretched necks

  others with open mouths from which still trickled my native land

  still others with fists pressed to eyes

  cramped emphatically pathetically taut

  in our hands we held pieces of sheet iron and bones

  (the floodlights had transformed them into symbols)

  but now they were no more than sheet iron and bones

  We had nowhere to go we stayed on the rubbish-heap

  we tidied things up

  the bones and sheet iron we deposited in an archive

  We listened to the chirping of streetcars to a swallow-like voice of factories and a new life was unrolling at our feet

  PLACE

  I returned years later

  perhaps too well-fed

  I wanted to check the place

  the hills were smaller

  and brown water ran

  in the rescue trenches

  grass mostly the same

  angelica remembered

  the view contracted

  was merely normal

  for so much fear

  for so much hope

  birds were flitting

  from lower branches

  to higher branches

  so even they could not

  offer me confirmation

  A HALT

  We halted in a town the host

  ordered the table to be moved to the garden the first star

  shone out and faded we were breaking bread

  crickets were heard in the twilight loosestrife

  a cry but a cry of a child otherwise the bustle

  of insects of men a thick scent of earth

  those who were sitting with their backs to the wall

  saw violet now—the gallows hill

  on the wall the dense ivy of executions

  we were eating much

  as is usual when nobody pays

  it’s fresh

  could be today’s

  covered in thick blood

  big as a sea fish

  he carries it around squares

  sprinkles it with salt

  praises it with a loud voice

  it’s fresh

  could be today’s

  those violet veins

  don’t actually mean anything

  they go up to him

  prod with fingers

  shake their heads

  when he holds it to his chest

  he can really feel

  it’s fresh

  still warm

  it’s fresh

  as if today’s

  it’s a shameless size

  who will buy a wound

  FAREWELL TO THE CITY

  chimneys salute this departure with smoke

  a barge sails downriver panes jolt and wail

  plaster lays a gray wreath on the pavement

  the hair of dust fans out almost into infinity

  on an island in a stir of lights in black cables

  the crab of a blind cathedral is dripping soot

  the stone mouths of choirs

  heads of prophets shells and a rattling of bones

  souvenir of a psalm to a star a rose and a chalice

  through the city center hasty as a pauper’s funeral

  a barge sails downriver heavy-laden with rubble

  PATH

  It wasn’t the path of truth it was simply a path

  red roots cut across it pine needles alongside

  and the forest full of berries and flitting spirits

  it wasn’t the path of truth for all of a sudden

  it lost its unity and from then onward in life

  our aims have been unclear

  On the right was a source

  if you chose the source you went on dark rungs

  into ever-deepening darkness groping blindly

  toward the mother of elements honored by Thales

  in order to merge with the moist heart of things

  with the dark kernel of the cause

  On the left was a hill

  the hill offered peace and a general view

  the border of the forest its shadowy mass

  no separate leaves trunks or strawberries

  soothing knowledge the forest is one of many

  Is it truly not
possible to have them together

  the source and the hill the idea and the leaves

  and pour out plurality without satanic ovens

  of dark alchemy of a too bright abstraction

  COMMON DEATH

  To Tadeusz Żebrowski

  what was the death that lay ahead:

  the defenseless whitish eggs of ants

  lost in the forest in the young forest

  under the lungs’ oak in the heart’s burrow

  through which a flood runs thudding

  a spring wells up and a mouth drinks

  delicate whiteness swims inward

  and falls to the bottom of the chest

  inner touch withdraws its tentacles

  the lantern of consciousness falters

  sight turns away and hearing fails

  you carry me in illuminated fingers

  a candle of love with tears of wax

  the flame stiffens when the candle

  sinks like a knife beneath the skin

  and knocks a blind beak against ribs

  to bestow a moment’s immortality

  if you turn your eye from the shelf

  from mirror candle a sleeping head

  and guide them toward the aorta

  you see the work in the heart’s pit

  the little weightless whiteness now

  bursts open its cocoon and is a bee

  I know well the touch of six legs

  climbing up to reach the honey

  and a sudden sting when it sleeps

  dreaming of a flower other than

  a sticky flower on a stem of veins

  not fate not lightning but an insect

  will discover it like a pine needle

  and carry away in its chitin tongs

  —the heart’s empty hive

  WINTER GARDEN

  Frost’s claw tapped on a window

  the eye opens onto the garden

  trees motionless to the senses

  are whirling inside light glass

  and only a reckless claw explains

  their flight as loosened hoarfrost

  gone is the earth of sticky paws

  digging in the remains of flowers

  carried behind a cloud of snow

  on the light lines of gravitation

  and only black stumps a branch

  as deaf as a bass reminded us

  a moment of the voice of earth

  before frost’s flame stifled them

  from rhomboids triangles pyramids

  despite the quivering line of hair

  through which blood is dripping

  despite the silks in mindless folds

  and a green coffin for a butterfly—

  from rhomboids triangles pyramids

  the wise garden was reconstructed

  a plane spans a net with diamond

  it will no longer summon insects

  to a banquet of honey and poison

  greet the frost when its agile beak

  takes out your heart and the birds’

  ruins the road’s track like a nest

  and orders you to cross the river

  from a black stump a heavy body

  a branch will sprout a white breath

  to bring an atom of all our dreams

  back into communion with the air

  IN THE MARGIN OF A TRIAL

  The Sanhedrin did not judge at night

  the blackness the imagination requires

  is in flagrant conflict with custom

  it’s quite implausible

  that Passover should have been violated

  all on account of some harmless Galilean

  it’s fishy how accounts of traditional foes—

  the Sadducees and the Pharisees—tally

  it fell to Caiaphas to carry out the inquiry

  ius gladii was in the hands of the Romans

  why then summon a host of shadows

  and the rabble howling give us Barabbas

  it seems it was all played out between clerks

  between pale Pilate and the tetrarch Herod

  a peerless feat of administrative prowess

  but who could whip up a drama out of that

  hence the scenario of frightened bearded men

  and the mob gathering on the mountain named

  skull

  it may have been colorless

  void of passion

  PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION OF AN ANGEL

  When he stands before them

  in the shadow of a suspicion

  he is still all

  composed of light

  the aeons of his hair

  are pinned up in a bun

  of innocence

  after the first question

  his cheeks flush with blood

  the blood is helped on

  with instruments and interrogations

  with an iron ferrule

  a slow fire

  the limits of his body

  are defined

  a blow on his back

  fixes his spine

  between cloud and mudpuddle

  after a few nights

  the job is finished

  the leather throat of the angel

  is full of gluey agreement

  how beautiful is the moment

  when he falls on his knees

  incarnate into guilt

  saturated with contents

  his tongue hesitates

  between knocked-out teeth

  and confession

  they hang him head downwards

  from the hair of the angel

  drops of wax run down

  and shape on the floor

  a simple prophecy

  REPORT FROM PARADISE

  In paradise the work week is fixed at thirty hours

  salaries are higher prices steadily go down

  manual labour is not tiring (because of reduced gravity)

  chopping wood is no harder than typing

  the social system is stable and the rulers are wise

  really in paradise one is better off than in whatever country

  At first it was to have been different

  luminous circles choirs and degrees of abstraction

  but they were not able to separate exactly

  the soul from the flesh and so it would come here

  with a drop of fat a thread of muscle

  it was necessary to face the consequences

  to mix a grain of the absolute with a grain of clay

  one more departure from doctrine the last departure

  only John foresaw it: you will be resurrected in the flesh

  not many behold God

  he is only for those of 100 per cent pneuma

  the rest listen to communiqués about miracles and floods

  some day God will be seen by all

  when it will happen nobody knows

  As it is now every Saturday at noon

  sirens sweetly bellow

  and from the factories go the heavenly proletarians

  awkwardly under their arms they carry their wings like violins

  THE LONGOBARDS

  An immense coldness from the Longobards

  They sit tightly in the saddle of a pass as in abrupt chairs

  In their left hand they hold auroras

  In their right hand a whip and they lash glaciers beasts of burden

  The crackling of fire the ash of stars the swing of a stirrup

  Under their nails under eyelids

  Clots of alien blood are black and hard like flint

  The burning of firs the barking of a horse ashes

  On the crags they hang a snake beside a shield

  Upright they march from the north sleepless

  Nearly blind the women by the fires are rocking red children

  An immense coldness from the Longobards

  Their shadow sears the grass when they flock into the valley

  S
houting their protracted nothing nothing nothing

  EPISODE FROM SAINT-BENOÎT

  In an old abbey overlooking the Loire

  (sap of every tree has run in this river)

  In front of the entrance to the basilica

  (it’s not a narthex but a stone allegory)

  on one of the capitals

  a naked Max Jacob

  is being torn apart

  by a Satan and a four-winged archangel

  the outcome of this skirmish

  was never announced

  unless you take into account

  the capital next to it

  Satan is clutching

  Jacob’s torn arm

  allowing the rest

  to bleed to death

  amid four invisible wings

  A DESCRIPTION OF THE KING

  The king’s beard on which sauces and ovations

  fell until it became heavy as an axe

  appears suddenly in a dream to a man condemned to die

  and on a candlestick of flesh shines alone in the dusk

  One hand for tearing meat is huge as a whole province

  through which a ploughman inches forward a corvette lingers

  The hand wielding the sceptre has withered from distinction

  has grown gray from old age like an ancient coin

  In the hour-glass of the heart sand trickles lazily

  Feet taken off with boots stand in a corner

  on guard when at night stiffening on the throne

  the king heirlessly forfeits his third dimension

  THE POET’S HOUSE

  Once there was breath on the windowpanes here, the smell of baking, the same face in the mirror. Now it’s a museum. The floor’s flora has been exterminated, the suitcases have been emptied, the rooms have been covered in wax. The windows have been left open for days and nights on end. Mice shun this air-locked house.