The Collected Poems

by Zbigniew Herbert

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