The Collected Poems

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The Collected Poems Page 23

by Zbigniew Herbert


  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

 

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