The Collected Poems

by Zbigniew Herbert

  a yellowish moisture a wolfish trace

  BUTTONS

  In memory of Captain Edward Herbert

  Only buttons witnesses to the crime

  proved unyielding outlasted death

  and as sole memorial on the grave

  rise up from the depths of the earth

  they are a testimony it is for God

  to count them and to be merciful

  but what resurrection if each body

  lies in the earth a clinging particle

  a bird flies over a cloud sails past

  a leaf descends mallows grow lush

  a mist drifts in the Smolensk forest

  and up in the heights a deep hush

  only buttons proved unyielding

  the mighty voice of a muted chorus

  only buttons proved unyielding

  buttons from coats and uniforms

  CLOUDS OVER FERRARA

  To Maria Rzepinska

  1

  White

  oblong like Greek ships

  cut off sharply at the bottom

  without sails

  without oars

  when I saw them

  the first time on a Ghirlandaio painting

  I thought

  they were a figment of the imagination

  an artist’s fancy

  but they exist

  white

  oblong

  cut off sharply at the bottom

  sunset adds to them the color

  of blood

  of gold

  and of celestial green

  they glide

  very slowly

  they are almost motionless

  2

  I couldn’t choose

  a thing in my life

  according to will

  knowledge

  or good intentions

  neither my profession

  nor a refuge in history

  an all-explaining system

  nor many other things

  and so I chose places

  numerous places stops

  —tents

  —roadside inns

  —homeless shelters

  —guest rooms

  —nights sub love

  —monastery cells

  —seaside boardinghouses

  vehicles

  like flying carpets

  from Eastern tales

  carried me

  from place to place

  sleepy

  ecstatic

  tormented by the beauty of the world

  in fact

  it was a breakneck journey

  tangled roads

  apparent aimlessness

  fugitive horizons

  now I see clearly

  the clouds over Ferrara

  white

  oblong

  without sails

  almost motionless

  gliding slowly

  but surely

  toward unknown

  shores

  it is in them

  not in stars

  that fate

  is decided

  HOMILY

  From the pulpit a fleshy pastor holds forth

  while his shadow falls on a wall to one side

  candles burn—icons gleam—a silent choir

  the pious folk are absorbed and teary-eyed

  the words flow rising high overhead

  the priest sure has a strange speech organ

  neither female nor male nor angelic

  and water from his mouth is not the Jordan

  for a priest—you see father—it’s all so simple

  The Lord made flies so that birds could eat

  He gives children and for them and the church

  a simple hand—a simple fish—a simple net

  this may be how to speak to those of quiet faith

  promise a rain of grace and light and miracles

  but there are also those who doubt and disobey

  let’s be honest—they are also God’s little ones

  please father—I’ve searched for Him in truth

  I wandered in a stormy night amid the rocks

  I drank the sand devoured stone and solitude

  the only thing standing a high flaming Cross

  I read the Church fathers of East and of West

  a honeyed account of paradise—old anxieties

  I thought a Sign would rise up from the pages

  but incomprehensible Logos held its peace

  you’ll probably not bury me in holy ground

  —the earth is wide—I shall go to sleep alone

  I’ll go off with the Jews and the odd ones out

  pack up life’s bags and leave without a groan

  from the pulpit the pastor says the same again

  calls me brother by my first name he calls me

  but I truly want to make just one thing plain

  that I don’t know him and that I’m aggrieved

  A POSTCARD FROM ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI

  Thank you Adam for your card from Fryburg

  on which an Angel with a cap of snow

  with his great trumpet heralds a charge

  of hideous apartment blocks

  They’ve come up over the horizon they come inexorably closer

  to reach your and my lecture podium

  Hideous apartment blocks of Chernobyl Nowa Huta Düsseldorf

  I can imagine just what you’re doing at this moment—

  reading to a handful of the faithful for there are still some left

  “Das was sehr schön, Herr Zagajewski.” “Wirklich sehr schön.”

  “Danke.” “Nichts zu danken.” “Das war wirklich sehr schön.”

  So there you are in spite of tragic Adorno’s fancy theories

  A comical situation because instead of drzewo you say der Baum

  instead of obtoki—die Wolken and die Sonne instead of stońce

  and it has to be so if the uncertain covenant is to last

  breakneck metamorphoses of sound to save an image

  So you’re in Fryburg I was there once too

  to make an easy buck for paper and bread

  Under a cynical heart I hid a naïve illusion

  that I was an apostle on a business trip

  The handful listening to us deserves beauty

  but also truth

  that is—danger

  so that they will be brave

  when the moment arrives

  The Angel in a cap of early snow is truly a Destroying Angel

  he raises his trumpet to his lips summons the fire

  vain our incantations prayers talismans rosaries

  The final moment is at hand

  elevation

  sacrifice

  the moment which sunders

  and we step separately into the melting sky

  MITTELEUROPA

  To Alexander Schenker

  It’s neither fish nor fowl

  and has no obvious goal

  Central Europe

  jumps out and flails

  like one of the tales

  of Aesop

  Hapsburg Otto served us

  —a solid man he was—

  in the role of our Caesar

  we still have some Bourbons

  but I’ll say in all earnest

  they are quite inferior

  This plaything of Caesars

  either angers or pleases

  a quick exit on standby

  appears on the horizon

  its blue circle drawn

  like a moon in the sky

  Let it shine for a while

  painted toy of a child

  old man’s nostalgic dream

  but between us I admit

  I don’t believe any of it

  (I might as well come clean)

  TO PIOTR VUJICIC

  Fundamentally there is nothing to be sorry about

  you know this well Piotr

&n
bsp; I’m not speaking to you but through you to others

  for half a century you knew my thoughts better

  than I did

  you translated them patiently

  on Čik Ljubin Street

  in the white City

  on a river now bleeding again

  we carried on a long conversation

  across the Alps Carpathians Dolomites

  and now in my old age

  I compose xenias

  this is my xenia for you

  I once heard an old man recite Homer

  I have known people exiled like Dante

  I saw all Shakespeare’s plays on stage

  I was lucky

  you might say born with a silver spoon

  explain that to others

  I had a wonderful life

  I suffered

  DINOSAURS’ HOLIDAY

  To Jan Adamski

  —Children in the middle—

  yells a graduate of dinosaurs’

  developmental psychology

  the obedient youngsters

  green as spring lettuce

  stand sweetly in line

  holding sweaty paws

  and on both their sides

  stride robust nephews

  from a cadet academy

  mothers fat as baobabs

  triple-tiered aunties

  and morose fathers

  whose only pastime

  is the monotonous

  perpetuation of the kind

  at the front

  The First Secretary

  founder of the school

  of Naïve Socialism

  a post-postgraduate

  of the Cambrian Sorbonne

  in just a moment

  they will enter a clearing

  and the First Secretary

  will give a policy speech

  on the virtues of mutual aid

  it’s truly a sight for sore eyes

  over the whole congregation

  the green flag of gentleness

  flutters

  divine equilibrium of nature

  sufficient oxygen

  a reasonable dose of nitrogen

  a snatch of helium

  the stroll goes on and on

  for millions of years

  but then

  the true

  monster

  enters

  the scene

  the Dinosaur with a human face

  in a flash

  the concept

  is embodied

  in real crime

  and the whole idyll

  is brought to an end

  in a grim bloodbath

  TO YEHUDA AMICHAI

  Because you are a king and I’m only a prince

  without a country

  with a people who trust in me

  I wander sleepless at night

  And you are a king and look on me as a friend

  worryingly—how long can you drag yourself

  through the world

  —A long time Yehuda To the very end

  Even our gestures differ—gestures of mercy

  of scorn of understanding

  —I want from you nothing but understanding

  I fall asleep at a fire with my head on my hand

  when night burns out dogs howl and guards go

  to and fro in the mountains

  SHAME

  When I was very ill shame abandoned me

  willingly I bared for alien hands surrendered to alien eyes

  the poor mystery of my body

  They invaded me brutally increasing the humiliation

  My professor of forensic medicine the old Mancewicz

  fishing a suicide’s remains from a pool of formaldehyde

  bent over him as if he wished to ask him for his pardon

  then with a deft movement he opened the proud thorax

  the basilica of the breath fell silent

  delicately almost tenderly

  So—faithful to the dead respectful of ash—I understand

  the wrath of the Greek princess her stubborn resistance

  she was right—a brother deserved a dignified burial

  a shroud of earth carefully drawn

  over the eyes

  OATH

  I will never forget you—the fleeting maidens and ladies

  I glimpsed on stairs in a crowd a bazaar a subway maze

  from the windows of cars

  —like summer lightning—the augury of fair weather

  —like a landscape adorned by the reflection in a lake

  —like a phantom in a mirror

  at the marriage of what is

  and what’s just anticipated

  —at a ball

  when the orchestra fades

  and dawn sets its candles

  still unlit in the windows

  I will never forget you—pure sources of joy—I too lived

  thanks to your doe-like eyes—thanks to lips not my own

  and to suntanned fingers caressingly handling silver fish

  You little lady from the Antilles I may remember best

  you whom I saw once chez le marchand des journaux

  I gazed struck dumb holding my breath not to scare you

  and for a moment I thought that—if I went with you—

  we would change the world

  I will never forget you—

  a startled flutter of lids

  matchless tilt of a head

  the bird’s nest of a palm

  in true memory I go over the faces

  unchanging mystical and nameless

  and the rose

  in black

  hair

  A MIRROR WANDERS THE ROAD

  In memory of Leopold Tyrmand

  1

  They say—

  art is a mirror

  that wanders the road

  and reflects reality faithfully

  uncanny two-legged mirror

  and so we know well

  the dives of Apuleius

  medieval Londinium

  Don Quixote’s wilds

  sentimental journeys

  forays into the jungle

  at times art reflects mirages

  northern lights

  the ecstasy of the possessed

  feasts of gods

  abysses

  takes on history too

  with mixed results

  attempts to domesticate it

  to give it human meaning

  hence ballets

  orchestras

  lifelike pictures

  motley novels

  poems

  in heavily gilded frames

  Leonidas bleeds vermilion

  in Beethoven’s opera a chorus

  sings persuasively of freedom

  a prince wounded at Borodino

  refuses to fall

  to the ground

  art tries to ennoble

  to raise to a higher level

  praise in song dance and chatter

  decayed human matter

  washed-out sufferings

  2

  here’s a ballet

  Svetlana sur la pointe

  rises high into the air

  and hangs there a cloud of tulle

  on the caught breaths of delight

  all this in a winter palace

  an ancient dungeon a circus

  where yesterday it swarmed

  with men herded to slaughter

  a ballet on ice—

  eternal returns

  a circle opens

  and is closed

  the classical pas de deux of victim and victor

  the last of the Romanovs

  dances with a handsome officer of the Cheka

  a circus—

  bells

  the pit of the air

  the juggler Unknown

  with his standard bill

  the (apolitical) beasts


  are just being let out

  the public yell bravo

  from fright as usual

  and that it can’t be

  the sea lions are obviously bored to death

  the polar bears add a little human warmth

  KHODASEVICH

  My friend from the anthology of Slavonic rhymesters

  (I don’t remember his poems just that they were moist)

  he was even famous in his time and fame was his game

  nothing wrong with that but what was his entelechy

  let’s say he was a hybrid a bit of everything mixed in

  spirit and flesh up and down now Marxist now Catholic

  cock and hen and to top it all off half-Russian half-Pole

  At the beginning and end of his art there is wonder

  that he was born that Khodasevich came into being

  under the stars It was worse with his other wonders

  about his identity and community about his roots

  he himself didn’t quite know who Khodasevich was

  he floated like seaweed on tempest-tossed waves

  throughout the universe from his birth to his death

  Khodasevich wrote poems some beautiful

  some bad the latter may find favor as well

  they have everything you want—melancholy

  pathos a lyrical turn the experience of danger

  sometimes a great flame rises from one of them

  but over many hangs the spirit of the occasional

  Khodasevich wrote prose as well—Lord help us

  about his childhood—that was even nicely done

  but he was much too invested in Swedenborg’s

  riddles followed Hegel and hell knows who else

  read always the same books badly like a student

  He was an émigré by nature as some are born

  let’s say as bastards saints or artists Himself

  a second-rate nobleman he had a relative

  who in turn was a baron or something along those lines

  and so Khodasevich spoke of him very warmly

  and admired his sulks his reveries his writing

  in French living in Paris and having mistresses

  Emigration as a form of existence an odd thing

  pitching your tent without friends and family

  living without sanction duties we all will agree

  our homeland weighs heavily on our shoulders

  our murky history atavisms despair it’s better

  to live in mirrors without angst Merezhkovsky

  babbles in his sleep Zinaida shows shapely legs

  Finally Khodasevich died in some state of Oregon