The Collected Poems

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The Collected Poems Page 15

by Zbigniew Herbert


  —women gold land don’t get knocked off your horse

  a prince did their thinking for them and a wind bore them along

  they tore at walls with their bare fingers and with a sudden cry

  fell into the void only to return in me

  but didn’t I go shopping in art salons

  for powders potions masks

  the cosmetics of nobility

  I held marble up to my eyes Veronese’s greens

  I rubbed my ears with Mozart

  I trained my nostrils on the musk of old books

  in the mirror the face I inherited

  a sack of old meats fermenting

  medieval cravings and sins

  paleolithic hunger and terror

  an apple falls not far from the tree

  the body is locked into the chain of species

  that’s how I lost the tournament with my face

  ON MR COGITO’S TWO LEGS

  The left leg is normal

  you might say optimistic

  a little on the short side

  laddish

  with rippling muscles

  and a well-shaped calf

  the right

  Lord have mercy—

  skinny

  with two scars

  one along the Achilles tendon

  the other oval

  a pale pink

  an ignoble memento of flight

  the left

  given to leaps

  balletic

  too fond of life

  to put itself at any risk

  the right

  nobly rigid

  mocking danger

  and so

  on both legs

  the left comparable to Sancho Panza

  and the right

  calling to mind the wandering knight

  Mr Cogito

  goes

  through the world

  staggering slightly

  MEDITATIONS ON FATHER

  His face menacing in a cloud over the waters of childhood

  (so seldom he held my warm head in his hand)

  given to be believed in forgiving no faults

  for he felled forests and cleared pathways

  he held a lantern high when we went into the night

  I thought that I would sit at his right hand

  we would part the light from the darkness

  and sit in judgment on the living

  —it was to be otherwise

  a junk dealer carried his throne off on a cart

  and a deed of ownership a map of our holdings

  he was born a second time tiny very frail

  with translucent skin and slight cartilage

  he shrank his body that I might receive it

  in a lowly place there’s a shadow under stone

  he himself grows in me we eat our defeats

  we burst out laughing

  when they say how little it takes

  to be reconciled

  MOTHER

  He fell from her lap like a ball of yarn. He unwound himself in a hurry and beat it into the distance. She held onto the beginning of life. She wound it on a finger hospitable as a ring; she wished to shelter it. He rolled down steep slopes, sometimes labored up mountains. He came back all tangled up and didn’t say a word. He will never return to the sweet throne of her lap.

  Her outspread arms glow in the dark like an old town.

  SISTER

  Owing to a negligible age difference childish proximity shared baths the mysteries of fluffy hair and soft skin the little Cogito discovered that he could be his sister (it was as simple as switching their places at the table when his parents were out and Gran let them run wild) and she own his name his bow his boy’s bike his nose luckily their noses differed and lack of physical likeness allowed them to avoid a dramatic sequence of events it ended with the sense of touch touch didn’t open up and young Cogito remained inside his skin’s borders

  a seed of doubt subverting principium individuationis

  was deeply lodged in him however and one afternoon

  on Legions Street thirteen-year-old Cogito observing

  a horse-cab driver

  felt he was the man so thoroughly

  that he sprouted reddish whiskers

  and the cold whip stung his hand

  MR COGITO AND THE PEARL

  Sometimes Mr Cogito calls to mind, not without emotion, his youthful march on perfection, those juvenile gestures per aspera ad astro. One time, for example, he was rushing to a lecture when a little pebble got into his shoe. It lodged itself maliciously between the live flesh and the sock. Reason dictated that the intruder be removed, but the principle of amor fati commanded the opposite, that it be endured. He chose the second, heroic course.

  At the outset it didn’t look so bad, just a nuisance, no more; but after a time the heel appeared in his field of consciousness, and this at the moment when the young Cogito was laboriously trying to grasp the professor’s train of thought elaborating Plato’s concept of the Idea. The heel grew; swelled, pulsed, turned pale pink to sunset purple, and drove from his mind not only Plato’s idea but all other ideas as well.

  In the evening before going to bed he shook the foreign body from his sock. It was a small, cold, yellow grain of sand. The heel on the other hand was swollen, hot, and dark with pain.

  SENSE OF IDENTITY

  If he had any sense of identity it was with a stone

  a sandstone not too porous a light luminous gray

  with a thousand eyes of flint

  (an absurd comparison a stone sees with its skin)

  if he felt any deep relation then it was to a stone

  it was not at all the idea of immutability the stone

  changed lazy in the sun it took on light like a moon

  when a storm built it darkened to blue like a cloud

  then drank rain thirstily those fisticuffs with water

  sweet destruction a war of elements clash of forces

  casting off of its own nature this drunken stability

  were both beautiful and humbling

  so in the end it sobered in air cleansed by lightning

  bashful sweat the transient cloud of erotic passion

  MR COGITO CONSIDERS A RETURN TO HIS NATIVE TOWN

  If I went back there

  I would probably not find

  a single shadow of my old home

  nor the trees of childhood

  nor a cross with an iron plaque

  a bench on which I murmured incantations

  nor a single thing that belongs to us

  all that survived

  is a flagstone

  with a chalk circle

  I stand in the middle

  on one leg

  the moment before jumping

  I cannot grow up

  though years pass

  and planets and wars

  clamor overhead

  I stand in the middle

  still as a monument

  on one leg

  before a jump into finality

  the chalk circle rusts

  like old blood

  around it grow mounds

  of ash

  up to the arms

  up to the mouth

  MR COGITO REFLECTS ON SUFFERING

  All attempts to avert

  the so-called cup of bitterness—

  by mental effort

  frenzied campaigns on behalf of stray cats

  breathing exercises

  religion—

  let you down

  you have to consent

  gently bow your head

  not wring your hands

  use suffering mildly with moderation

  like a prosthetic limb

  without false shame

  but without pride also

  don’t brandish your stump

  over other people’s heads

  don’t knock your white cane

  on the
panes of the well-fed

  drink an extract of bitter herbs

  but not to the dregs

  be careful to leave

  a few gulps for the future

  accept it

  but at the same time

  isolate it in yourself

  and if it is possible

  make from the stuff of suffering

  a thing or a person

  play

  with it

  of course

  play

  joke around with it

  very solicitously

  as with a sick child

  cajoling in the end

  with silly tricks

  a wan

  smile

  MR COGITO’S ABYSS

  At home it’s always safe

  but just over the threshold

  when Mr Cogito goes out

  on his morning stroll

  he meets—the abyss

  this is not the abyss of Pascal

  this is not the abyss of Dostoevsky

  this is an abyss

  to Mr Cogito’s size

  fathomless days

  fear-fraught days

  it follows him like a shadow

  waits in front of the bakery

  in the park it reads the paper

  over Mr Cogito’s shoulder

  irksome as eczema

  affectionate as a dog

  too shallow to swallow

  his head arms and legs

  maybe one day

  the abyss will fill out

  the abyss will mature

  and be serious

  if only he knew

  what water it drank

  what grain to feed it

  now

  Mr Cogito

  could pick up

  a few fistfuls of sand

  and fill it up

  but he doesn’t

  and so when

  he goes home

  he leaves the abyss

  at the threshold

  covering it deliberately

  with a scrap of old cloth

  MR COGITO AND PURE THOUGHT

  Mr Cogito attempts

  to achieve pure thought

  at least before sleep

  the attempt in itself bears

  the seed of its own defeat

  so when he is nearing

  the state in which thought is like water

  the vast and pure water

  on an indifferent shore

  the water suddenly wrinkles

  and a wave throws up

  tin cans

  driftwood

  a wisp of someone’s hair

  if truth be told Mr Cogito

  isn’t wholly without fault

  he couldn’t tear

  his inner eye

  from the mail box

  his nostrils could smell the sea

  crickets tickled his ear

  and he felt her absent hand under his belt

  he was ordinary like the rest

  his thoughts were furnished

  the softness of a hand on an armrest

  the furrow of tenderness

  on a cheek

  someday

  some other day

  when he is cold

  he will attain the state of satori

  and he will be as the masters recommend

  vacant and

  astonishing

  MR COGITO READS THE NEWSPAPER

  The front page reports

  120 soliders were killed

  the war was long

  you get used to it

  right next to this news

  of a spectacular crime

  with the killer’s photo

  Mr Cogito’s gaze

  moves with indifference

  over the soldiers’ hecatomb

  to plunge with great relish

  into the quotidian macabre

  a thirty-year-old farmworker

  in a state of manic depression

  murdered his own wife

  and two small children

  we are told the exact

  way they were killed

  the position of bodies

  and the other details

  it’s no use trying to find

  120 lost men on a map

  a distance too remote

  hides them like a jungle

  they don’t speak to the imagination

  there are too many of them

  the numeral zero on the end

  turns them into an abstraction

  a theme for further reflection:

  the arithmetic of compassion

  MR COGITO AND THE MOVEMENT OF THOUGHT

  Thoughts cross the mind

  a common idiom has it

  the common idiom

  overestimates thoughts’ mobility

  a majority of them

  stand motionless

  in a dull landscape

  of bleak hillocks

  and withered trees

  sometimes they reach

  the rushing river of someone else’s thoughts

  they stand on the bank

  on one leg

  like hungry herons

  mournfully

  they recall dried-up springs

  they circle around

  looking for grains

  they don’t cross

  because they won’t get anywhere

  they don’t cross

  because there’s nowhere to get to

  they sit on the rocks

  wringing their hands

  under the low

  overcast

  firmament

  of the skull

  HOUSES ON THE OUTSKIRTS

  On overcast autumn afternoons Mr Cogito likes to visit the grimy neighborhoods at the edge of town. There is, he says, no purer source of melancholy.

  Houses on the outskirts with rings under your windows

  houses which quietly cough up

  shivers of plaster

  houses with thinning hair

  and a sickly complexion

  only chimneys are dreaming

  their tapering lamentation

  reaches the edge of a forest

  the shore of the great water

  I’d like to think of names for you

  fill you with fragrances of India

  the fire of the Bosphorus

  the babbling of waterfalls

  houses on the outskirts with sunken temples

  houses chewing on crusts of bread

  cold as the sleep of a crippled man

  your stairs are palm trees of dust

  houses forever for sale

  bad luck motels

  houses who never saw a show

  rats of houses on the outskirts

  lead them to the ocean’s shore

  let them sit in the warm sand

  let them see a subtropical night

  let waves reward them with a thunderous ovation

  such as befits a squandered life

  MR COGITO’S ALIENATIONS

  Mr Cogito holds in his arms

  the warm amphora of a head

  the rest of the body is hidden

  seen only by touch

  he gazes at the sleeping head

  strange but full of tenderness

  yet again

  he ascertains with amazement

  that one apart from him exists

  impenetrable

  as a stone

  with borders

  which open

  for just a moment

  before a sea casts it

  onto a rocky shore

  with its own blood

  its stranger’s dreams

  fitted out with its own skin

  Mr Cogito lays

  the sleeping head

  delicately aside

  so as not to leave

  any fingerprints

  on the cheeks

  and turns away

&nb
sp; lonely

  into the whitewashed sheets

  MR COGITO OBSERVES A DECEASED FRIEND

  He was breathing heavily

  the crisis was supposed to come at night

  it was twelve noon

  Mr Cogito stepped out into the corridor

  to smoke a cigarette

  first he shifted the pillow

  and smiled at his friend

  he was breathing heavily

  his fingers

  moved

  on the quilt

  when he came back

  his friend was gone

  in his place

  lay something else

  with its head tilted

  its eyes bulging

  the usual commotion

  a doctor came running

  injected a needle

  which filled up

  with dark blood

  Mr Cogito

  waited a moment longer

  staring at what remained

  it was empty

  like a sack

  it was shrinking

  more and more

  squeezed by unseen tongs

  crushed by a different time

  if he had turned to stone

  a heavy marble sculpture

  impassive and dignified

  what a relief it would be

  he lay on a narrow islet

  of annihilation

  torn from the trunk

  shed like a cocoon

  lunchtime

  plates rang

  the Angelus

  no angels descended

  The Upanishads consoled

  when his word

  enters thought

  thought breath

  breath fire

  fire the highest divinity

  then he can no longer

  know

  so he could not know

  he stood impenetrable

  with a bundle of stark mystery

  at the gates of the valley

  THE QUOTIDIAN SOUL

  In the morning mice scamper

  around the head

  on the floor of the head

  scraps of conversations

  detritus of an epic

  enter

  the room’s muse

  in a blue apron

  sweeping

  my master

  receives better guests

  Heraclitus of Ephesus let’s say

  or the prophet Isaiah

  today no one is calling

  my master paces nervously

  talking to himself

  ripping up innocent papers

  in the evening he goes out his destination unknown

 

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