ZBIGNIEW HERBERT (2) ~

 

Winter (from three erotic poems)

I now think

disgracefully rarely

of my First Great Abandoned One

I carefully avoid

anything that might cause

a consternation of memories

—places we used to meet

—street corners

—landscapes

—benches

—benches

—trees

—the window where

our light burned

slowly but pitilessly

I forget

the color of her eyes

what

remains

now rests

in a cardboard box

photographic negatives

our faceless pictures

if someone ran a pointer finger

down the sharp edge of the frame

the heart's blood

would flow

            a friend told me

            that My First Great Love

            now lives alone

            not counting the sea's company

            she is blind

            and compares herself with weaving

            what does she weave

            on the dark loom

            for me it's like

            an empty platform

            like absolute

            irrevocability

            like a pensive drowned man

            with a hat firmly jammed

            over his ears

            who floats

            with his head turned away

            from the world

            like night

            in a mirror

____________________

Zbigniew Herbert

Reconstruction of the Poet

uncollected works

Ecco, 2024

RECONSTRUCTION OF ZBIGNIEW HERBERT ~

 

So Much

How hard

to save a person

who loves

I always feel

your slender arm

heavy as a body

It runs through my fingers

like water

Your breath

my pallor

and care

How hard

to save a person

who trusts

I bend over your sorrow

I lift the weight of love

I lift you from earth in my arms

carry you on my lips

give you up to prayer

On the Repatriation of

Bruno Jasienski's Remains

When the thaw reached

the Far North

the poet's body emerged

from under the ice cap

his grave so shallow

body only half buried

a daisy in one ear

a little grass in the other

but taken all in all

he was in very good shape

so they freshened him up

wiped the mold from his lips

blew on him and slapped him

doused him with jasmine

farewell dear poet

off to your fatherland

his fatherland is happy

the academy overjoyed

no one says they killed him

they all say: he came back

they scream and shout

the crowd lifts him up

so you see my old pal

no need for living legs

at the author's evening

obedient comrades

whip him into shape

make blustery threats

and attached to his strings

the poet steps up to the mic

a little stiff but confident

he wants to read his poems

His hand in his wig

his voice makes the megaphone squeal

he grunts and gestures

and they all say: he's so alive

the poem ends with a shriek

he raises a hand and screams

the string snaps and the arm

drops woodenly on the table

so as to erase the image

the cry goes up: long life

and presidium and poet

go off to have a drink

his wife is at the reception

but she behaves differently

when looking at her husband

she sobs into a handkerchief

champagne caviar oysters

pineapples and wine

poor man no more will you

drink water or feed on clay

but the poet eats nothing

doesn't even clink glasses

pale he goes off to one side

begins to wind his shroud

but no one notices this

alcohol flows like a stream

and it's only near dawn

they yell: he's gone and died again

________________________

Zbigniew Herbert

Reconstruction of the poet

Ecco, 2024

Translated by Alissa Valles

RE-READING TWO GEMS ~

Zbigniew Herbert 1960

 

I read again these two slender books over the 4 of July

fest when we could detect from the woods where

we spent two nights by camp fire preparing delicious

simple meals what sounded like mortar fire from two

outlying towns ten miles away, a strong bright

lamp allowed all the reading we wanted late into

the night after dishes with these two strong minds

on the subjects of books, other writers, travel into

foreign lands, and mosing around art, architecture,

wars and recovery.

[ BA ]

WHEN THE WORLD STANDS STILL ~

   

  When the World Stands Still


It happens very rarely. The earth's axis screeches and comes to

a stop. Everything stands still then: storms, ships and clouds

grazing in the valleys. Everything. Even horses in a meadow

become immobile as if in as unfinished game of chess.

    And after a while the world moves on. The ocean swallows

and regurgitates, valleys send off steam and the horses pass

from the black field into the white field. There is also heard

the resounding clash of air against air.


________________

Zbigniew Herbert
Selected Poems
Carcanet 1985
translated from the Polish by Czeslaw Milosz and Peter Dale Scott

ZBIGNIEW HERBERT ~

                                                                                    Zbigniew Herbert


 
BEARS



     Bears are divided into brown and white, also paws, head and

trunk. They have nice snouts, and small eyes. They like greedi-

ness very much. They don't want to go to school, but sleeping in

the forest — that, yes, very much. When they don't have any

honey, they clutch their heads in their hands and are so sad, so

sad, that I don't know. Children who love Winnie-the-Pooh

would give them anything, but a hunter walks in the forest and

aims with his rifle between that pair of small eyes.






CAT



     He is all black, but has an electric tail. When he sleeps in the

sun he is the blackest thing one can imagine. Even in his sleep

he catches frightened mice. One can see this in the little claws

that are growing from his paws. He is terribly nice and naughty.

He picks birds off the trees before they are ripe.






COUNTRY



     At the very corner of this old map is a country I long for. It is

the country of apples, hills, lazy rivers, sour wine, and love. Un-

fortunately a huge spider has spun its web over it, and with

sticky saliva has closed the toll gates of dreams.

     It is always like that: an angel with a fiery sword, a spider,

and conscience.






THE WOLF AND THE SHEEP



     — I've got you, said the wolf, and yawned. The sheep turned

its teary eyes toward him.  — Do you have to eat me? It is really

necessary?

     — Unfortunately I must. This is how it happens in all the

fables: Once upon a time a naughty sheep left its mother. In the

forest it met a bad wolf who. . .

     — Excuse me, this is not a forest, but my owner's farm. I did

not leave my mother. I am an orphan. My mother was also eaten

by a wolf.

      — It doesn't matter. After your death the authors of edifying

tales will look after you. They will add a background, motives,

and a oral. Don't hold it against me. You have no idea how silly

it is to be a bad wolf. Were it not for Aesop, we would sit on our

hind legs and gaze at the sunset. I like to do this very much.

     Yes, yes dear children. The wolf ate the sheep, and then

licked his lips. Don't follow the wolf, dear children. Don't sac-

rifice yourselves for the moral.






FOREST



     A path runs barefoot to the forest. Inside are many trees, a

cuckoo, Hansel and Gretel, and other small animals. But there

are no dwarfs, because they have left. When it gets dark and owl

closes the forest with a big key, for if a car sneaked in it would

really do a lot of harm.






WASP



     When the honey, fruit and flowery tablecloth were whisked

from the table in one sweep, it flew off with a start. Entangled in

the suffocating smoke of the curtains, it buzzed for a long time.

At last it reached the window. It beat its weakening body repeat-

edly against the cold, solid air of the pane. In the last flutter of its

wings drowsed the faith that the body's unrest can awaken a

wind carrying us to longed-for worlds.

     You who stood under the window of your beloved, who saw

your happiness in a shop window — do you know how to take

away the sting of this death?






THE POET'S HOUSE



     Once there was breath on these window panes, the fragrance

of a roast, the same face in the mirror. Now it is a museum. The

flora of the floors has been exterminated, the chests emptied,

rooms flooded with wax. For entire days and nights they kept

the windows open. Mice avoid this infected house.

     The bed is neatly made. But no one wants to spend even a

single night here.

     Between  his wardrobe, his bed and his table — the white

frontier of absence, precise as the cast of a hand.




_________________

Zbigniew Herbert
Elegy for the Departure
translated from the Polish by
John and Bogdana Carpenter
Ecco Press 1999

A WAY OUT ~

ZBIGNIEW HERBERT


Born in 1924 in Lwow Poland, where he was forced to leave as a student when the Soviet Red Army invaded in 1944, for Krakow, where he studied economics, and then another move to Sopot where his parents resided and he began work at the Polish National Bank, all the while continuing his Law studies, poet and essayist Zbigniew Herbert dropped into a bookshop when he was twenty-four and wrote his first of many essays. While reading the essay I thought it was as fresh as a daisy and may have been one of his concluding remarks, often repeated by many others to this minute, on the demise of poetry. Zbigniew Herbert passed away in 1999.


~

The bookseller on whose counter I put down two slim volumes I'd found on a high shelf, looked at me in disbelief.

"Poetry," he muttered, "but almost nobody buys that these days. It's commercial waste paper."

That last phrase, though softened by the adjective "commercial," grated on my ear for a long time. On the way home I wondered, mournfully: are we really seeing the demise of poetry? Is this oldest of literary genres departing to the cemetery of exhausted forms? Forms too diminutive for the coming content? Does emotion lie under the threshold of sensitivity in a person of our atomic age?

In spite of everything, poetry exists. There are poets who write poems, publish defenseless little books, literary journals print experts' polemics, critics are led by the nose. Only the whole movement is suspended in air, because a poet's word never becomes a household word. Contemporary poetry is ridiculed by the average reader, and school has done an expert job of making the classics repugnant. The number of people who read poetry is minuscule — it's an inarguable fact.

Let's try to find the causes of this state of affairs, let's try to find a way out.

( from "Poetry In A Vacuum?" 1948)


coda:

A. But language is a common medium of communication for all people.

B. That's exactly where the problem lies. Language is an impure instrument of expression. Tortured on a daily basis, made banal, subjected to base treatment. So the dream of poets is to reach the virgin meaning of words, to give things their proper names, as Norwid says, "Let words mean only what they mean and not against whom they are used." That's a quote from another great poet. For me the dialogue with objects was such an attempt to reach the pure source of speech. It was also a rebellion against liars and swindlers."

(from "Conversation on Writing Poetry" 1973)






The Collected Prose, Zbigniew Herbert
1948-1998
Ecco