Zbigniew Herbert Poems

Mr. Cogito never trusted
tricks of the imagination

the piano at the top of the Alps
...

The pebble
is a perfect creature

equal to itself
...

Too old to carry arms and fight like the others -

they graciously gave me the inferior role of chronicler
I record - I don't know for whom - the history of the siege
...

Go where those others went to the dark boundary
for the golden fleece of nothingness your last prize

go upright among those who are on their knees
...

I would like to describe the simplest emotion
joy or sadness
but not as others do
reaching for shafts of rain or sun
...

A home above the year's seasons
home of children animals and apples
a square of empty space
under an absent star
...

Those who sailed at dawn
but will never return
left their trace on a wave--
...

The tsar our little father had grown old, very old. Now he could not even strangle a dove with his own hands. Sitting on his throne he was golden and frigid. Only his beard grew, down to the floor and farther.

Then someone else ruled, it was not known who. Curious folk peeped into the palace windows but Krivonosov screened the windows with gibbets. Thus only the hanged saw anything.
...

1

Lucky Saint George
from his knight's saddle
...

Over a delicate arch--
an eyebrow of stone--

on the unruffled forehead
...