the other high bank which falls sheerly downward
and reveals at long last what had to be confessed
clay sand limestone cliffs patches of black earth
and a forest thinned out now a forest in mourning
I am happy which is to say deprived of illusions
the sun appears briefly it offers on the other hand
a fine display of sunsets somewhat in Nero’s taste
I am at peace it is time to say farewell
our bodies have taken on the color of the earth
LANDSCAPE
A windy night and on this lonely road the prince of Parma’s army
has left carcasses of horses
on a bald hill the bones of a recently conquered castle are glowing
there’s only stone sand waste and a wind without purpose or color
What enlivens the landscape is a moon sharply imprinted on the sky
and a few soiled shadows below
as well as a white gallows for hanging from it are the thin pods
of bodies in which a wind blows life this wind without trees and clouds
JOURNEY
1
If you set out on a journey pray that the road is long
a wandering without apparent aim a blind groping
so you come to know earth’s harshness not just by sight but by touch
so that you measure yourself against the world with your whole skin
2
Befriend a Greek from Ephesus an Alexandrian Jew
they will lead you through slumbering bazaars
through cities of treaties clandestine passages
there above a burned out furnace an emerald tablet
Basileos Valens Zosima Geber Filalet sway
(the gold evaporated the wisdom remained)
through the parted veil of Isis
corridors like mirrors framed in darkness
speechless initiations and innocent orgies
by abandoned drifts of myths and religions
you will reach naked gods without symbols
dead gods forever in their creatures’ shade
3
When you come to know don’t speak of knowing
learn the world again like an Ionian philosopher
know the taste of water and fire of air and earth
for they will remain when all has passed away
and the journey remains though no longer yours
4
Then your homeland will seem too small for you
a cradle a boat tied to a branch by a mother’s hair
when you remember its name no one by the fire
will know across which mountain it lies
what trees it engenders
when really it needs so little tenderness
repeat before sleep the comic sounds of its tongue
Że—czy—się
smile before sleep at the blind icon
at the burdocks the stream the path the wetlands
your home has passed away
it is a cloud over the world
5
Discover the meanness of speech the kingly power of gesture
the uselessness of concepts the purity of vowels
with which everything can be expressed pity joy delight anger
but have no anger
accept everything
6
What is that city bay street river
a cliff rising above the sea needs no name
the earth is as the sky
signposts of the winds lights high and low
the signs have fallen to dust
sand rain and grass have leveled memory
names are transparent and empty as music
Kalambaka Orchomenos Kavalla Levadia
the clock stops and from then on hours are black white or blue
permeated with the thought that your face is losing its features
when the heavens put a mark on your head
what answer can a carved inscription make to thistles
yield the empty saddle without regret
yield the air to another
7
So if there is a journey pray that it be long
a true journey from which you do not return
a copying of the world an elemental journey
a dialogue with nature an unanswered question
a pact forced after a battle
a great atonement
WIT STWOSZ: THE DORMITION OF THE VIRGIN
Golden mantles ripple like tents before a storm
a surge of hot purple lays chests and feet bare
the cedar apostles raise their enormous heads
a beard dark as an ax hovers over the heights
The woodcarvers’ fingers bloom. A miracle eludes
their grasp so they grasp at air—stormy as strings
Stars grow turbid in the sky they make music too
but it doesn’t reach earth it stays high as the moon
And Mary falls asleep. She sinks to the bottom
of surprise. Tender eyes hold her in a fragile net
she falls upward as a stream runs through fingers
and they bend with effort over the building cloud
PRAYER OF OLD MEN
but later on later on
won’t you reject us
when children women patient animals go off
because they can’t bear to see our wax hands
our movements unsure as a butterfly’s flight
our stubborn silence and cougher’s idiom
and the moment nears when a world shrunken in the eye
is removed from the eye like a tear and smashed like glass
when suddenly the drawer of memory opens
I am asking
whether then
you will gather us in again
for it will be a return to the lap of childhood
to a great tree to a dark room
an interrupted conversation sorrowless tears
I know
it is a matter of blood
and we lazy mystics dragging our legs
with a rheumatic prayer in bony hands
we listen to sand falling into our veins
and a white church grows in the dark interior
made of salt recollection chalk and unspeakable frailty
once again you will be led
by asthmatic labor of bells
amid flowers set alight
clinging to a wafer’s taste to white canvas
if it is hard to make angels of us
transform us into heavenly dogs
mongrels with ruffled hair
moths with gray faces
snuffed eyes of gravel
but do not allow
the inasatiable darkness of your altars
to consume us
tell us one thing
that we will return
MR COGITO’S ADVENTURES WITH MUSIC
1
a long time ago
at the dawn of life in fact
Mr Cogito succumbed
to the seductive charms of music
his mother’s singsong bore him
across the groves of childhood
Ukrainian nannies
hummed him to sleep
with a lullaby expansive as the Dnieper
he grew
as if rushed along by sounds
amid chords
dissonances
in a vertiginous crescendo
he received a basic
musical education
albeit incomplete
Let’s Play the Piano
(Book One)
he remembers
the hungers of his university years
more piercing than hunger for food
when he waited before the concert
for the divine grace of a free ticket
hard to say
when doubts
scruples
>
pangs of conscience
began to nag at him
he seldom listened to music
not with his former voracity
with growing embarassment
the spring of joy dried up
this was not the fault
of the masters
of the motet
the sonata
the fugue
the orbit of things
was what changed
the field of gravity
and with it
Mr Cogito’s
inner axis
he couldn’t
step into the river
of his former joy
2
Mr Cogito
began to hoard
arguments against music
as if he intended to write
a treatise on hurt feelings
or throttle harmony
with angry rhetoric
throw his own weight
on a violin’s slim back
over her bright face
a hood of anathema
but let us judge impartially
she
is not wholly without fault
her inglorious origin—
sounds at intervals
rushed off to work
wringing out sweat
the Etruscans flogged slaves
to the accompaniment of pipes and flutes
she is therefore
morally neutral
like the sides of a triangle
the spirals of Archimedes
a bee’s anatomy
she flouts the three dimensions
flirts with infinity
adorns time’s abyss
with flimsy trinkets
her force hidden and open
makes philosophers uneasy
The divine Plato noted—
changes in musical style
cause social revolution
the overturning of laws
mild Leibniz tutted
said she brings order
and is the clandestine
arthimetical
exercise
of souls
what is she though
what is she really
a cosmic metronome
an exaltation of the air
a celestial medicine
steam whistle of moods
3
Mr Cogito
suspends without answer
his reflections on the nature of music
but the tyrannical power of this art
will give him no peace
the impetus with which
she invades our interior
saddens without reason
gladdens without cause
fills recruits’ rabbit hearts
with the blood of heroes
absolves too easily
purges for nothing
—who gave her the right
to yank at anyone’s hair
to draw tears from eyes
to stir up for the attack
Mr Cogito
doomed to stony speech
to hoarse syllables
secretly worships
transient lightness
carnival isles and groves
beyond good and evil
the true reason for the separation
is the unworthiness of characters
a different bodily symmetry
different turns of conscience
Mr Cogito
always defended himself
from time’s smoke puffs
he valued concrete objects
standing serenely in space
he adored lasting things
things all but immortal
dreams of the tongues of angels
he left in the garden of dreams
he chose
what is subject to
earthly measures and judgments
so that when the hour strikes
he assents without a murmur
to the trial of true and false
to the trial of fire and water
SPECULATIONS ON THE SUBJECT OF BARABBAS
What became of Barabbas? I ask but no one knows
Let off his chain he went into the brightly lit street
he could turn to the right go straight turn to the left
spin around in a circle crow cheerfully as a rooster
He the Emperor of his own head and hands
He the Governor of his own breath
I ask because in a sense I took part in the whole thing
Swayed by the crowd in front of Pilate’s palace I cried
along with all the others free Barabbas free Barabbas
Everyone was shouting and if I alone had been silent
it would all have happened as it was meant to happen
So perhaps Barabbas went back to his gang of thieves
In the mountains he kills swiftly and plunders deftly
Or maybe he set up a pottery workshop
and now cleans his crime-stained hands
in the clay of creation
He’s a water carrier a mule driver a moneylender
a shipowner—a ship of his carried Paul to Corinth
or—the possibility cannot be excluded—
he became a valued spy in Roman pay
Behold and marvel at the vertiginous play of fate
with possibilities power and smiles of fortune
But the Nazarene
was left alone
without alternative
with a steep
pathway
of blood
WAGON
What is he doing
this century-old man
his face like an old book
his eyes dry of tears
his lips pursed tight
guarding memories
history’s mutterings
now when
winter hills
are fading
and Fujiyama enters the constellation Orion
Hirohito
a centenarian—emperor god and bureaucrat
—is writing
these are not acts
of pardon
or acts of wrath
nominations
of generals
elaborate tortures
but a piece
for the yearly
traditional poetry competition
the theme
is a wagon
the form: the venerable tanka
five verse lines
thirty-one syllables
“taking a seat on a train
of the state railway line
I meditate on the world
of my grandfather
the emperor Meiji”
a poem
ostensibly mundane
with its breath held
no false posturings
different
from the glibly lachrymal
handiwork of modernity
full of triumphal howling
a scrap
on the railway
devoid of melancholy
of the bustle before a long journey
and even devoid
of pity and hope
I think
of Hirohito
with an aching heart
his stooped shoulders
his frozen head
his old doll’s face
I think of his
dry eyes
small hands
slow mind
like the pause between
one screech of the owl
and another
I wonder
with an aching heart
what will be the fate
of traditional poetry
will it pass away
after the emperor’s shadow
perishable
negligible
LEO’S DEATH
1
; With great bounds—
across immense fields
under a sky obscured
by December clouds
from a bright clearing
toward the dark wood
—Leo takes flight
after him come hunters
in dense line formation
with great bounds
his beard blowing
his face inspired
with anger’s fires
Leo takes flight
to a forest on the horizon
following after him
Lord have mercy
a rabid hunt
is on
a hunt is on
for Leo
at the front
Zofia Andreyevna
soaked to the bone
after her daily suicide
calls exhorts
—Lyovochka—
in a voice that could
make rocks crumble
following her
sons daughters
manor flunkies
gendarmes priests
bluestockings
moderate anarchists
Christians illiterates
Tolstoyans
Cossacks
and every kind of riffraff
women shriek
fellows bellow
it’s hell
2
the finale
at the small station Ostapovo
a little wooden cage
on the iron railroad
the Good Railwayman
has laid Leo on the bed
he is safe now
over the small station
the lights of history flared up
Leo has closed his eyes
indifferent to the world
only cocky
priest Pimen
who has vowed
to lug Leo’s soul
to heaven
bends over him
and shouting over
his hoarse breathing
and gruesome chest noises
he asks slyly
—What now then—
—I must flee—
says Leo
and he repeats
—I must flee—
—where to—says Pimen
—where O Christian soul—
Leo has fallen silent
hidden himself in the shadow of eternity
in eternal silence
no one understood the prophecy
as if no one knew scripture
“Nation shall rise against nation,
and kingdom against kingdom
and they shall fall by the edge of the sword
and shall be led away captive
into all nations
The Collected Poems Page 23