The Collected Poems

by Zbigniew Herbert

  the maw

  in the fog

  you see only

  the flickering of nothingness

  Mr Cogito’s monster

  lacks all dimensions

  it’s hard to describe

  it eludes definitions

  it’s like a vast depression

  hanging over the country

  it can’t be pierced

  by a pen

  an argument

  a spear

  if not for its stifling weight

  and the death it sends

  you might conclude

  that it was a phantom

  a disease of the imagination

  but it’s there

  it’s there all right

  it fills crannies of houses

  temples bazaars like gas

  it poisons the wells

  destroys a mind’s constructs

  covers the bread with mold

  proof the monster exists

  is offered by its victims

  indirect proof

  but sufficient

  2

  the sensible say

  you can coexist

  with the monster

  just try to avoid

  violent gestures

  violent speech

  when threatened

  take on the form

  of a stone or leaf

  obey wise Nature

  who urges mimicry

  breathe shallowly

  play we’re not here

  Mr Cogito however

  dislikes living as-if

  he’d like to fight

  the monster

  on solid ground

  so he goes out at dawn

  to the sleeping suburbs

  intrepidly fitted out

  with a long sharp object

  he calls to the monster

  through empty streets

  he insults the monster

  provokes the monster

  like the daredevil scout

  of a non-existent army

  he calls—

  come out you dirty coward

  through the fog

  you see only

  the huge mug of nothingness

  Mr Cogito wants to

  join the unqual fray

  this should happen

  as soon as possible

  before he is felled

  by powerlessness

  common death without glory

  suffocation by shapelessness

  REGICIDES

  As Régis suggests they resemble each other like twins

  Ravaillac and Princip Clement and Caserio

  most often they come from lines of epileptics and suicides

  though they themselves are healthy that is to say average

  usually young very young and they stay that way forever

  their solitude they sharpen their knives for months and years

  and in the forest outside the city they train in sharpshooting

  they work out the attack they’re diligent alone and very honest

  bring meager earnings to their mothers care for siblings don’t drink

  no girls or friends

  after the attack they surrender without a struggle

  they hold up manfully under torture don’t ask for a pardon

  deny alleged partners in crime produced by the prosecution

  there was no conspiracy they were really acting on their own

  their inhuman sincerity and simplicity

  drives judges defense lawyers the public crazy no sensation

  they who send these souls off into the other world

  will be struck by the calm of the condemned men in their last hour

  calmness an absence of anger of regret and even of hatred

  often a kind of radiance

  their brains are rummaged through

  their hearts are weighed stomachs opened however no deviations

  from the norm are discovered

  not one of them managed to change the course of history

  but a dark message passed from generation to generation

  so those small hands are worthy of our careful reflection

  the small hands in which trembles the sureness of a blow

  DAMASTES NICKNAMED PROCRUSTES SPEAKS

  My portable empire between Athens and Megara

  all on my own I ruled over the woodlands gorges precipice

  without the advice of old men silly insignia nothing but a club in hand

  dressed in a wolf’s shadow and the chilling sound of the word Damastes

  I lacked subjects that is I had them only briefly

  they didn’t live till dawn but it is slander to call me a thug

  as do the counterfeiters of history

  in fact I was a scholar a social reformer

  my true passion was anthropometry

  I designed a bed to the size of the perfect man

  I measured captured travelers against that bed

  it was hard to avoid—I admit—stretching limbs

  trimming extremities

  the patients died but the more of them perished

  the surer I became that my research was correct

  the end was sublime progress requires sacrifice

  I wanted to remove the distance between high and low

  to give a single form to repellingly diverse humanity

  I never wavered in my endeavors to even people out

  my life was taken by Theseus killer of the innocent Minotaur

  the one who fathomed the labyrinth with a prissy ball of yarn

  a fraud full of ruses without principle or vision of the future

  I live in the undying hope that others will assume my task

  and will bring a labor so boldly initiated to its completion

  ANABASIS

  The condottieri of Cyrus the Foreign Legion

  crafty and ruthless—to be sure—murdered

  two hundred and fifteen daylong marches

  —please kill us we can’t go any farther—

  thirty-four thousand six hundred fifty stadia

  harrowed by insomnia they traversed wild countries

  tricky fords snowy mountain passes and salty plains

  hacking a path through the living bodies of peoples

  it’s good they didn’t claim to be defending civilization

  the famous cry on the mountain of Teches

  is interpreted incorrectly by sentimental poets

  they had just found the sea a way out of the dungeon

  they journeyed without Bible prophets burning bushes

  without signs on earth without signs from the heavens

  with the terrible consciousness that life is momentous

  ABANDONED

  1

  I arrived too late

  for the last transport

  I stayed in the city

  which is not a city

  without morning papers

  without evening papers

  there’s no

  prison

  clock

  or water

  I am enjoying

  some time off

  outside time

  I go on long walks

  down avenues of burned houses

  avenues of sugar

  of broken glass

  of rice

  I could write a treatise

  on the abrupt change

  of life into archaeology

  2

  there’s a terrible silence

  the artillery in the suburbs

  choked on its own courage

  at times

  you hear nothing

  but the tolling of scattered walls

  and the soft thunder

  of tin roofing swaying in the air

  there’s a terrible silence

  before a predator’s night

  sometimes

  an absurd airplane

  appears in the s
ky

  it throws out leaflets

  calling for surrender

  I would be happy to surrender

  but I’ve no one to surrender to

  3

  at present I live

  in the best hotel

  a murdered porter

  keeps to his lodge

  from a pile of debris

  I walk straight out

  onto the first floor

  into the rooms

  of the former mistress

  of the former chief of police

  I sleep on a bed of newspaper

  cover myself with the poster

  promising an ultimate victory

  in the bar there’s still

  medicine for solitude

  bottles of gold liquid

  and a symbolic label

  —Johnnie

  tipping his top hat

  hurries to the west

  I bear no one any grudge

  for my being abandoned

  I ran out of luck

  and a right hand

  on the ceiling

  the light bulb

  resembles an upside-down skull

  I wait for the victors

  I drink to the fallen

  I drink to deserters

  I have rid myself

  of dark thoughts

  even forebodings of death

  have abandoned me now

  BEETHOVEN

  They say that he went deaf—but it isn’t true

  the demons of his hearing worked tirelessly

  no dead lake ever slept in the shells of his ears

  otitis media then acuta

  made his hearing aid catch

  shrieking tones and hisses

  rumbling and a thrush’s call the wooden bell of forests

  he took from this what he could—high violin descants

  lined with the thick blackness of string basses

  the list of his illnesses passions falls

  is as rich as the list of his finished works

  tympano-labyrinthische Sklerose probably lues

  finally what had to come came—a great stupor

  mute hands beating on dark boxes and strings

  the angels’ puffed-out cheeks proclaim silence

  typhus in childhood then angina pectoris arterial sclerosis

  in the Cavatina of Quartet Opus 130

  you hear shallow breathing a contracted heart dyspnea

  slovenly quarrelsome with his face marked by chicken pox

  he drank to excess and cheaply—beer cab driver’s schnapps

  his liver weakened by tuberculosis finally gave up the game

  there’s nothing to mourn—the creditors have died

  the mistresses the skivvies and the countesses too

  the princes and patrons—the candelabras sobbed

  he borrows money as if he were still alive rushes

  between heaven and earth makes his connections

  but the moon is the moon even without its sonata

  MR COGITO THINKS ABOUT BLOOD

  1

  Mr Cogito

  reading a book

  on the horizons of science

  a history of thought’s progress

  from the murky depths of deism

  into the daylight of knowledge

  happened on an episode

  which cast darkness on

  his private horizon

  like a cloud

  a minor contribution

  to the bulky history

  of man’s fatal errors

  for a very long time

  the conviction was sustained

  that a man carries within him

  a plentiful reservoir of blood

  a pot-bellied keg

  twenty plus liters

  —no big deal

  this may explain

  the flowing descriptions of battles

  fields red as coral reefs

  pulsing streams of gore

  a heaven that repeats

  inglorious hecatombs

  also the universal

  method of healing

  the diseased

  had their arteries opened

  and the precious fluid

  was blithely let

  into a tin basin

  not everyone held out

  Descartes mouthed in his agony

  Messieurs épargnez—

  2

  today we know exactly

  that in each human body

  hangman or hanged

  there swim barely

  four or five liters

  of what is called

  the body’s soul

  a few bottles of burgundy

  a pitcher

  a quarter

  of a trash can’s contents

  not much

  Mr Cogito

  naively wonders

  why this discovery

  didn’t bring about a turn

  in the sphere of customs

  it should at least incline

  to a reasonable frugality

  we can’t as we used to

  squander it prodigally

  on war’s killing fields

  on sites of execution

  there’s truly not much

  less than water or oil

  our sources of energy

  but it has happened otherwise

  base conclusions were drawn

  instead of restraint

  improvidence

  precise measurement

  strengthened nihilists

  gave tyrants new scope

  they now know for sure

  a human being is fragile

  easily drained of blood

  four or five liters

  a negligable sum

  the triumph of science

  has not fed us in spirit

  nor offered a principle

  of action a moral norm

  it’s a meager consolation

  Mr Cogito is thinking

  that researchers’ efforts

  alter nothing in its course

  and barely weigh as much

  as the inspiration of a poet

  blood

  swims on

  crosses the body’s horizon

  the borders of imagination

  —looks like there’ll be a flood

  MR COGITO AND MARIA RASPUTIN—AN ATTEMPT AT CONTACT

  1

  Sunday

  early afternoon

  a hot day

  years ago

  in far-off California—

  leafing through

  The Voice of the Pacific

  Mr Cogito

  received the news

  of the death of Maria Rasputin

  daughter of Rasputin the Terrible

  the short notice

  on the last page

  touched him personally

  moved him profoundly

  there was nothing

  tying him to Maria

  whose narrow life

  can’t be woven in

  an epic’s tapestry

  here is her outline history

  mundane

  and slightly banal

  at the time

  when the usurper Vladimir Ilyich

  wiped out the anointed Nicholas

  Maria hid away

  across an ocean

  swapped willows

  for palm trees

  she waited on

  White émigrés

  in the aroma of her native tongue

  and pancakes cucumbers borscht

  her odd ambition was

  to wash dinner plates

  for men of noble birth

  if not a prince

  at least a baron

  if need be the widow

  of an officer of the guard

  unexpectedly

  an artistic career

  opened its gates

  she made her debut
/>
  in the silent film

  Jimmie the Jolly Sailor

  this silly picture

  didn’t ensure Maria

  any enduring place

  in the history of the tenth Muse

  later

  she appeared in revues

  at second-rate theaters

  in vaudeville shows

  in the end

  a pinnacle

  she won fame

  in the circus act

  Dance with the Bear

  or Siberian Wedding

  the furor was short-lived

  her partner Misha

  hugged her too ardently

  the violent caress

  of a jilted homeland

  a miracle she survived

  all of this

  plus two

  failed marriages

  and another important detail

  she proudly rejected an offer made

  to publish a fictitious autobiography

  under the title Daughter of Lucifer

  she showed more tact

  than a certain Svetlana

  2

  the note in the Voice of the Pacific

  is adorned with a photograph

  of the deceased

  a robust

  woman

  hewn from strong timber

  stands

  in front of a wall

  her hand holds

  a leather object

  something between

  a lady’s necessaire

  and a mailman’s bag

  Mr Cogito’s attention

  is drawn

  not to Maria’s Asiatic face

  or her tiny little bear’s eyes

  the sturdy silhouette of a one-time dancer

  but above all

  that fiercely clutched

  leather object

  what

  was she

  carrying

  across wildernesses

  urban wastelands

  forests

  mountains

  valleys

  —Petersburg nights

  —a Tula samovar

  —an Old Church Slavonic songbook

  —a stolen silver soup ladle

  with the tsarina’s monogram

  —a tooth of Saint Cyril

  —war and peace

  —a pearl dried in herbs

  —a lump of frozen earth

  —an icon

  no one will know

  she took the bag

  with her

  3

  now

  the earthly remains

  of Maria Rasputin

  daughter of the last demon

  of the last of the Romanovs

  lie in an American cemetery

  unmourned

  by church bells

  a priestly bass

  what is she doing