nakedness was left to us and we stand here naked
on the right the better side of the tryptych
The Last Judgment
we took public affairs onto our lanky shoulders
the battle with tyranny lies the recording of pain
but our foes—you admit—were despicably small
and so was it worth it to bring down holy speech
to rostrum gibberish to a newpaper’s black foam
so little joy—sister of the gods—in our poems Ryszard
too few glimmering twilights mirrors wreaths ecstasies
nothing just obscure psalmodies the whine of animulae
urns of ash in a burned-out garden
what forces do we need—in spite of destiny
the decrees of history and human iniquity—
to whisper a good night in treason’s garden
what forces of the spirit do we need
blindly beating despair against despair
to ignite a spark a word of atonement
that the dancing circle might last on the soft grass
that a child’s birth and every beginning be blessed
the gifts of the air of the earth of fire and of water
I don’t know—my friend—and that’s why
I send you these owl’s riddles in the night
a warm embrace
a bow from my shadow
MR COGITO AND LONGEVITY
1
Mr Cogito
can be proud of himself
he passed the life span
of many other animals
when the worker bee
goes to its eternal rest
the suckling Cogito
enjoyed the best of health
at the time cruel death
takes the house mouse
he beat whooping cough
discovered speech and fire
if we take the word
of bird theologians
the soul of a swallow
takes wing to paradise
after ten
earthly springs
at that age
young master Cogito
was studying with uneven results
in the fourth grade of high school
and women began to intrigue him
then
he won the Second World War
(a doubtful victory)
just at the point when a goat
strays off to its goat Valhalla
his doings were considerable
despite a couple of dictators
he crossed the Rubicon of a half-century
bloody
but unbowed
he outdid
the carp
the alligator
the crab
now he finds himself
between the twilight
of the eel
and the twilight
of the elephant
here
to be honest
Mr Cogito’s
hopes expire
2
a coffin shared with an elephant
is not a prospect terrible to him
he doesn’t crave the longevity
of the parrot
or the Hippoglossus vulgaris
or for that matter
the soaring eagle
the armored turtle
the fatuous swan
to the end
Mr Cogito would like to praise
the beauty of what is transient
that’s why he doesn’t lap up gelée royale
or drink elixirs
doesn’t make a pact with Mephistopheles
with the care of a good gardener
he cultivates wrinkles in his face
he obediently receives calcium
being deposited in his arteries
he rejoices in memory’s gaps
memory used to torment him
from infancy
immortality
induced in him a state
of tremendum
envy the gods for what?
—sky-blue drafts
—botched management
—insatiable lust
—mighty yawns
MR COGITO ON VIRTUE
1
No surprise
that she isn’t the true bride
of real men
generals
power brokers
despots
for centuries she has stalked them
that whimpering old maid
in her hideous Salvation Army hat
reminding them
dragging from the attic
a portrait of Socrates
a cross made of dough
old words
—but all around glorious life runs riot
blushing like a slaughterhouse at dawn
she can almost be laid to rest
in a little silver case
of innocent keepsakes
she is getting smaller
like a hair in the throat
like buzzing in the ear
2
My God
if she were just a little younger
a little prettier
went with the spirit of the times
rocked her hips
to the rhythm of the latest music
maybe then real men
would start fancying her
generals power brokers despots
if she took care of herself
looked halfway attractive
like Liz Taylor
or the Goddess of Victory
but she gives off
a smell of mothballs
she purses her lips
repeats the great—No
intolerable and stubborn
comical as a scarecrow
like an anarchist’s dream
like the lives of the saints
SHAMEFUL DREAMS
Metamorphoses down to the sources of history
of childhood’s paradise lost in a drop of water
flights pursuits along passageways of mice
expeditions of insects to a flower’s interior
a sudden awakening in the nest of an oriole
or a quick sprint across the snow in a wolf’s skin
and by a cliff edge a great howl to the full moon
sudden terror when a wind carries a killer’s smell
a whole sunset in a deer’s antlers
the snake’s spiral-shaped dream
the vertical vigil of the flatfish
all this is written down in the atlas of our bodies
and printed in our skull-rock like ancestral portraits
and so we recite the alphabet of a forgotten tongue
we dance at night before statues of animals
dressed in skin scales feathers ocean shells
infinite is the litany of our crimes
beneficent spirits please do not spurn us
we’ve wandered too long across oceans and stars
take us wearied beyond our strength into the fold
MR COGITO’S ESCHATOLOGICAL PREMONITIONS
1
So many miracles
in Mr Cogito’s life
caprices of fortune
flights and falls
eternity will likely
be bitter for him
without travel
friends
books
on the other hand
time in abundance
like a tuberculosis patient
an emperor in banishment
he will probably sweep
purgatory’s great square
or languish at the mirror
of an empty barbershop
without a pen
ink
parchment
without childhood memories
without universal history
or a guidebook to birds
like all the others
he will enroll in
courses on kicking
his earthly habits
the recruiting commission
works quite meticulously
eradicates the senses left
to candidates for heaven
Mr Cogito will defend himself
he will put up fierce resistance
2
he will most easily give up smell
he always used it with moderation
he never followed anyone’s tracks
he will also render without regret
the taste of food
the taste of hunger
on the recruiting commission’s desk
he will lay out the petals of his ears
in his temporal existence
he was a lover of silence
he will merely
explain to stern angels
that his sight and touch
prefer not to leave him
that he still feels in his flesh
all the earthly thorns
shudders
caresses
flames
lashes of the sea
that he can still see
a pine on a hill slope
dawn’s seven candlesticks
a stone with blue veins
he will submit to all tortures
to gentle persuasion
but to the end he will defend
the splendid sensation of pain
and a couple of faded images
in the pit of a burned-out eye
3
who knows
he may manage
to convince the angels
that he is unfit
for heavenly
service
and they will let him return
along an overgrown path
on the shore of a white sea
to the cave of the beginning
LULLABY
Years are shorter and shorter
priests of the temple of Ammon
discovered that the Eternal Lamp burns less oil each year
that means the world is contracting
space time and people
Plutarch passed on the priests’ observation no doubt
provoking angry growls in circles of philosophy
for driven to despair by the mutability of humankind
they would like the cosmos to serve as our example
However the proof of the lamp absurd though it seems
accords with the experiences of those who abandoned
inns stations houses and crossed the stream of illusion
and now go down a gentle slope there where we all go
They know
—day and night dwindle
—a rose torn off a bush at dawn sheds its petals in a panic
by evening it is no more than a burned-out grove of pistils
—between a yawn in December and a nap in August
scarcely a moment passes without incident or longing
—the leaves journeys amazements are fewer and fewer
—a candle slender as a needle held in trembling hands
shows the way from a wall to a wall
frozen mirrors refuse us consolation
—our dear departed abundant as shoals of sand resembling
sand and our memory isn’t taking in any lodgers
—in empty rooms dust has settled and keeps a diary
—your native city expires and even Ca d’Oro
no longer glows and all the places we loved
on short-lived peninsulas sink into the sea
Each year the Eternal Lamp burns less oil
So the good universe lays us down to sleep
PHOTOGRAPH
With that little boy unmoving like the Eleatic arrow
that boy in the high grass I have nothing in common
apart from a date of birth and the lines on our palms
my father took the picture before the second Persian war
I deduce from the leafage and clouds that it was August
birds and crickets sounded it smelled of grain of fullness
at the bottom the river called Hypanis on Roman maps
a watershed and near thunder told us to flee to the Greeks
their colonies on the seaside were not all that far away
the boy is smiling trustfully the only shadow he knows
is the shadow of a straw hat of a pine tree of the house
and if any glow in the sky then the glow of the sunset
my little boy my Isaac bend your head
just a moment of pain and then you will be
anything you like—a swallow a lily of the valley
so I have to spill your blood my little boy
for you to stay innocent in summer lightning
forever safe like an insect caught in amber
pretty as a fern’s cathedral preserved in coal
BABYLON
When years later I returned to Babylon it had changed
the girls I once loved the numbers of the subway lines
I waited by the phone the sirens were stubbornly silent
so art’s solace—Petrus Christus’s portrait of a young lady
grew flatter and flatter tucked in its wings to go to sleep
lights of the city and of annihilation drew near each other
the festival of the Apocalypse processions of the usurper
The sybil absolved drunken crowds worshippers of plenty
God’s trampled body was dragged in triumph in the dust
thus finimondo is fulfilled Etruscan tables were crammed
celebrating in wine-stained shirts unconscious of their fate
the barbarians will arrive at the end to slash their aortas
I did not wish death on you city at least not such a death
for with you freedom’s sweet fruits will go underground
and we must begin anew from bitter knowledge from grass
THE DIVINE CLAUDIUS
It is said of me
that Nature conceived
but never finished me
like a sculpture set aside
a sketch
an epic’s damaged fragment
for years I played the fool
—idiots have a safer life
I bore offenses sanguinely
if I were to sow all the pits
that they spat in my face
an olive grove would rise
a spacious oasis of palms
I received an all-round education
Livy the orators the philosophers
I spoke Greek like an Athenian
but resembled Plato
only lying down
I completed my education
in lupanars dockside taverns
O unwritten dictionaries of vulgar Latin
and you plumbless vaults of debauchery and licence
after Caligula’s murder
I hid behind a curtain
dragged out by force
I didn’t manage to muster a wise mien
when the world was thrown at my feet
nonsensical and flat
from that time I became the most diligent
emperor in the history of the world
a Heracles of bureaucracy
I remember with pride
a liberal decree
which sanctioned the release of stomach sounds
during banquets
I reject the frequent charge of cruelty
in fact it was nothing but distraction
on the day of Messalina’s violent death
I admit—the poor girl was put to death on my orders
I asked in the middle of a feast—where is the Missus
a gravelike silence came as the answer
I had truly forgotten
It happened that I would invite
dead people to a game of dice
I punished absence with a fine
&
nbsp; overextended by so many tasks
I may have mixed up the details
it seems
I ordered the execution
of thirty-five senators
and three centurions on horseback
so what
a little less purple
a few gold rings less
but also—no small thing—
more room in the theater
no one wanted to see
the operations had a sublime purpose
I wished to get people accustomed to death
dull its edge
reduce it to banal and everyday dimensions
like minor depression or the common cold
here I offer as proof of
my delicacy of feeling
that I removed the statue of gentle Augustus
from the execution square
to spare the tender marble
the braying of the condemned
I devoted nights to study
wrote a history of the Etruscans
a history of Carthage
a bit piece on Saturn
an introduction to game theory
a treatise on snake poisons
It was I who saved Ostia
from an invasion of sand
I laid swamps dry
built aqueducts
from that time it was easier
to wash off blood in Rome
I extended the Empire’s frontiers
to include Britannia Mauretania
and Thrace I believe
my death was caused by my wife Agrippina
and an unrestrained passion for boletus mushrooms
the essence of forests became the essence of death
remember—O posterity—with fit honor and gratitude
at least one achievement of the divine Claudius
I added new symbols and sounds to the alphabet
extended the frontiers of speech i.e. the frontiers of freedom
the letters I invented—my beloved daughters Diagamma Antisigma
led my shade
when I set out with a faltering step for the murky realms of Orcus
MR COGITO’S MONSTER
1
The lucky Saint George
could judge the dragon’s
strength and movements
from his knightly saddle
strategy’s first principle
size up the enemy well
Mr Cogito’s position
is less advantageous
he’s seated in the low
saddle of the valley
wrapped in thick fog
in the fog you can’t make out
the burning eyes
the greedy claws
The Collected Poems Page 19