The Collected Poems

by Zbigniew Herbert

  The bed is neatly made. But no one would spend a single night here.

  Between his cupboard, his bed, and his chair—a white outline of absence, sharp as the cast of his hand.

  MALACHOWSKI’S RAVINE

  Count Juliusz leads the soldiers through a shadowy ravine into the mountains. He is sky blue and amaranthine; his whiskers are golden. Into the mountains he leads them, among beech trees and April birds.

  Suddenly it is swarming with Muscovites, a forest in the forest, an anthill. Count Juliusz raises his eyes, seeking the radiance of the sun. It is overcast. He strains upward in the stirrups, stretches out his neck; he wants to rip one light ray from the heavens. All at once his epaulettes darken. He can no longer remember the Latin phrase.

  Where the ravine ends there is now a gray stone and the Angelus.

  PRIESTS AND PEASANTS

  The priests lead the peasants out onto an elevated plain. They plant them in even rows like potatoes, amid fermented hills, on a gentle slope. The linden trees dress up and scatter their leaves.

  The peasants want to lead the priests out into the field. The priests defend themselves with little white hands. They loathe this heathen sowing. He who has returned to dust shouldn’t start blossoming. The lindens dress up and scatter their leaves.

  Hence the bickering and the bargaining with the sexton Mercury, so that he doesn’t pull the rope, doesn’t rock the heavy tongue, doesn’t scare the crows.

  FENCES

  Fences with weeds and dogs on chains

  so their barking won’t reach the moon

  a night shared by people toads and hops

  in the black greenery in its moist depths

  As meadows are just turning blue-gray

  a farm hut chimes with a creaking gate

  at dawn farmers are off to the horizon

  their enormous shoes leading the way

  they go prodding a tiny sun with poles

  NATIVE DEVIL

  1

  He came from the West in the early tenth century. Initially he was bursting with energy and ideas. The clip-clop of his hooves was heard all over the place. The air smelled diabolical. This virgin land, nearer to hell than to heaven, seemed to him a promised land. The fickle folk soul was virtually begging for a baptism of dark fire.

  On hillsides belfries quivered. Monks squeaked like mice. Sacramental water was poured out by the canful.

  2

  The castles and cities he leased to masters of alchemy and fraudulent magicians. He himself sank his ten claws into the nation’s red meat—the peasantry. He entered deep into the flesh leaving no trace. Matricides threw together votive chapels. Fallen girls raised themselves up. The possessed grinned idiotically.

  Angels’ muscles turned flabby. People fell into a dull virtue.

  3

  Very quickly the smell of sulfur left him. He began to smell innocently of hay. He became something of a boozer. He went to the dogs completely If he visits a barn, he doesn’t tie the cows’ tails together. He doesn’t even tickle the nipples of farmers’ wives at night.

  But he survives everyone. Stubborn as a cockle, lazy as a burdock.

  ORNAMENTAL BUT REAL

  The three-dimensional illustrations from pitiful textbooks. Deathly white, with dry hair, an empty quiver, and a shriveled thyrsus. They stand motionless on arid islands, amid living stones under a leafy firmament. A symmetrical Aphrodite, a Jove bewept by dogs, a Bacchus drunk on plaster. The disgrace of nature. Blemishes on gardens.

  Real gods entered the skin of stone only briefly and reluctantly. Their mighty enterprise—thunderbolts and dawn light, hunger and golden rain—demanded an extraordinary mobility. They fled from burning cities; clutching waves they sailed to distant isles. In beggars’ rags they crossed the borders of ages and civilizations.

  Pursued and pursuing, sweating, yelling, in an uninterrupted hunt for fugitive humanity.

  TUSCULUM

  He had never trusted the luck of ships’ ropes

  so he bought a house with a garden like them

  at last he could write in harmony with Nature

  from a tall tower of grass amid mortal leaves

  the industriousness of insects wars of weeds

  the love rituals of animals and blind killings

  there was no order only a sand-strewn path

  offered solace

  he soon withdrew in a state so unmistakable

  that no one dared ask him

  the disgrace of that flight

  CERNUNNOS

  The new gods followed the Roman army at a decent distance, so that the swaying of Venus’s hips and Bacchus’s uncontrolled fits of laughter wouldn’t seem too inappropriate in the face of the cooling ashes and the bodies of barbarian heroes being ceremonially buried by beetles and ants.

  The old gods spied on the new ones from behind trees, without sympathy but with admiration. Those pale, hairless bodies seemed feeble but oddly appealing.

  Despite language difficulties it came to a meeting on the heights. A few conferences decided how spheres of influence were to be divided. The old gods contented themselves with second-rate jobs in the provinces. Nevertheless, on the occasion of greater celebrations they were portrayed on carved stone (porous sandstone) together with the conquering gods.

  It was Cernunnos who cast a real shadow on this collaboration. At his friends’ insistence he did take a Latin ending, but his spreading and evergrowing horns could not be covered up with any wreath.

  For that reason he has mostly resided in backwood areas. He is often seen in dusky clearings. In one hand he holds a snake with the head of a lamb; the other draws completely incomprehensible signs in the air.

  THE HILL FACING THE PALACE

  The hill facing Minos’s palace is like a Greek theater

  tragedy leaning its back against the impetuous slope

  rows of fragrant shrubs curious olive trees

  applaud the ruins

  Between nature and human fate

  there is no essential connection

  the saying that grass mocks catastrophe

  is a whim of the inconsolable and fickle

  An odd case: two straight parallel lines

  will never intersect not even in infinity

  That’s all you can honestly say about it

  SHORE

  She waits on the bank of a great slow-moving river

  Charon is on the other side The sky glows turbidly

  (it isn’t a sky at all as it happens) Charon is here

  he has just cast the ropes out over a branch

  She (this soul) takes out the obol

  from under her tongue where it soured only briefly

  sits down at the rear end of the empty boat

  all this without a word

  if only there were a moon

  or a dog howling

  CURATIA DIONISIA

  The stone is well-preserved An inscription (bad Latin)

  declares Curatia Dionisia lived forty-something years

  and raised this modest monument at her own expense

  her solitary banquet continues the cup held in midair

  the face without a smile The doves are too heavyset

  she spent the last years of her life in Brittany

  near the wall which brought the barbarians to a halt

  in a castrum whose foundations and cellars survive

  she was engaged in the most ancient female practice

  briefly but sincerely mourned by Third Legion soldiers

  as well as a certain elderly officer

  she told sculptors to lay two pillows under her elbow

  the dolphins and sea lions signify travel to distant lands

  though from here it was no more than a few steps to hell

  ATTEMPT AT THE DISSOLUTION OF MYTHOLOGY

  The gods gathered in a barracks just outside town. Zeus gave his usual long and boring speech. The final conclusion: the organization had to be disbanded; enough s
illy conspiracies; it was time to enter rational society and somehow make do. Athena was sniveling in a corner.

  It should be emphasized that the last proceeds were divided equitably. Poseidon was in an optimistic frame of mind. He bellowed brashly that he would be just fine. It was worst for the guardians of regulated streams and forests felled for lumber. Secretly they were all counting on dreams, but no one wanted to talk about it.

  No conclusions were drawn. Hermes abstained from voting. Athena sniveled in a corner.

  Late in the evening they traveled back into town, with false documents in their pockets and a handful of copper coins. As they crossed a bridge, Hermes flung himself into the river. They saw him drowning but no one tried to save him.

  Opinions were divided on whether this was a bad or, on the contrary, a good omen. In any case it was a point of departure for something new and not yet clear.

  THE MISSING KNOT

  Clytemnaestra opens the window and mirrors herself in the glass, putting on her new hat. Agamemnon is in the antechamber; he lights a cigarette, waiting for his wife. Aegisthus enters the gate. He doesn’t know that Agamemnon returned the night before. They meet on the stairs. Clytemnaestra suggests they go to the theater. From now on they will often go together.

  Electra works for a cooperative. Orestes is a pharmacology student. He will soon marry his reckless girlfriend with pale skin and eternally tear-filled eyes.

  DAWN

  At the profoundest moment before dawn, the first voice resounds, both blunt and sharp like a knife stab. Then rustlings growing from minute to minute bore through the stump of night.

  It seems that there is no hope at all.

  Whatever is struggling for light is mortally frail.

  And when a bloody cross section of a tree appears on the horizon, surreally big and almost painful, let us not forget to bless the miracle.

  SHE WAS DOING HER HAIR

  She was doing her hair before going to bed

  and before the mirror it took an infinitely long time

  between one arm bending at the elbow and the other

  epochs passed her hair soundlessly spilled soldiers

  of the second legion called Augustus Antoninian’s

  Roland’s comrades artillery gunmen from Verdun

  with resilient fingers

  she secured the halo over her head

  it took so long

  that when she

  finally began her swaying

  march toward me

  my heart till now so docile

  stood still

  and on my skin I felt

  coarse grains of salt

  PERIOD

  In appearance a drop of rain on a beloved face, a beetle immobilized on a leaf when a storm approaches. Something which can be enlivened, erased, reversed. Rather a stop with a green shadow than the terminus.

  In fact the period which we attempt to tame at any price is a bone protruding from the sand, a snapping shut, a sign of a catastrophe. It is a punctuation of the elements. People should employ it modestly and with a proper consideration as is customary when one gives fate a hand.

  WRISTWATCH

  As long as our watch has in it one ant, two, or three, everything is in order and nothing menaces our time. At the very worst the watch is handed in for cleaning, which in any case is nonsense. Once ants settle in there is no way to exterminate them. They are invisible to the naked eye, red, and very voracious.

  After a little while they start rapidly to multiply. It can be said picturesquely that we now wear on our wrist, not a watch, but a heap. The labour of greedy jaws we take for ticking.

  In search of nourishment ants plunder our veins. In the evening from the folds of our underlinen we shake out russet balls of blood.

  When the work of the ants is completed the watch in general stops. But one can will it to one’s children. In that case everything starts all over again.

  CHINESE WALLPAPER

  A desert island with the sugary head of a volcano. In the middle of the level water, a fisherman with a line, reeds. Higher up, the island spreading like an apple tree, with a pagoda and a little bridge where lovers meet under the budding moon.

  If it ended here, it would be a pretty episode—the history of the world in a word or two. But this is repeated into infinity with senseless, stubborn precision—the volcano, the lovers, the moon.

  There is no worse insult to the world.

  PRACTICAL RECOMMENDATIONS IN THE EVENT OF A CATASTROPHE

  It usually begins innocently enough with an acceleration, unnoticeable at first, of the turning of the earth. Leave home at once and do not bring along any of your family. Take a few indispensable things. Place yourself as far as possible from the centre, near the forests the seas or the mountains, before the whirling motion as it gets stronger from minute to minute begins to pour in towards the middle, suffocating in ghettoes, closets, basements. Hang on forcefully to the outer circumference. Keep your head down. Have your two hands constantly free. Take good care of the muscles of your legs.

  THE PASSION OF OUR LORD PAINTED BY ANONYMOUS FROM THE CIRCLE OF RHENISH MASTERS

  They have ugly mugs, but their hands are dexterous, accustomed to hammer and nail, iron and wood. They’re just now nailing Our Lord Jesus Christ to the cross. Loads of work to do; they have to hurry up so everything will be ready at noon.

  Knights on horseback as props for the drama. Their faces are impassive. Their long lances mimic trees without branches on that hill without trees.

  Able craftsmen are nailing—as was said—Our Lord to the cross. Ropes, nails, a stone for sharpening tools are laid out neatly on the sand. A bustle, but without excessive agitation.

  The sand is warm, painted meticulously, grain by grain. Here and there a tuft of grass protrudes stiffly and an innocent white daisy soothes the eye.

  We fall asleep on words

  and wake up with words

  sometimes congenial

  simple nouns

  forest or ship

  they break away from us

  the forest rushes off

  across the horizon

  the ship sails away

  without trace or cause

  dangerous are the words

  dropped out of a whole

  scraps of phrases sayings

  a beginning of a refrain

  from a forgotten anthem

  “he shall be saved who …”

  “remember to …”

  or “like”

  a little pricking pin

  holding together

  the most beautiful lost

  metaphor in the world

  you must dream patiently

  hoping the content will be completed

  that the missing words

  enter crippled sentences

  and the certainty we are waiting for

  casts anchor

  WHY THE CLASSICS

  1

  in the fourth book of the Peloponnesian War

  Thucydides tells among other things

  the story of his unsuccessful expedition

  among long speeches of chiefs

  battles sieges plague

  dense net of intrigues of diplomatic endeavours

  the episode is like a pin

  in a forest

  the Greek colony Amphipolis

  fell into the hands of Brasidos

  because Thucydides was late with relief

  for this he paid his native city

  with lifelong exile

  exiles of all times

  know what price that is

  2

  generals of the most recent wars

  if a similar affair happens to them

  whine on their knees before posterity

  praise their heroism and innocence

  they accuse their subordinates

  envious colleagues

  unfavourable winds

  Thucydides says only

  that he had seven shipsr />
  it was winter

  and he sailed quickly

  3

  if art for its subject

  will have a broken jar

  a small broken soul

  with a great self-pity

  what will remain after us

  will be like lovers’ weeping

  in a small dirty hotel

  when wallpaper dawns

  What will happen

  when hands

  fall away from poems

  when in the other mountains

  I drink dry water

  this should not matter

  but it does

  what will poems become

  when the breath departs

  and the grace of speaking

  is rejected

  will I leave the table

  and descend into the valley

  where there resounds

  new laughter

  by a dark forest

  MR COGITO

  1974

  MR COGITO STUDIES HIS FACE IN THE MIRROR

  Who wrote our faces chicken pox for sure

  marking its o’s with a calligraphic pen

  but who bestowed on me my double chin

  what glutton was it when my whole soul

  yearned for austerity why are my eyes

  set so closely together it was him not me

  waiting in the scrub for the Vened invasion

  the ears that protrude two fleshy seashells

  no doubt left me by an ancestor who strained for an echo

  of the thunderous march of mammoths across the steppes

  the forehead not too high it doesn’t think very much