When The Rooms -by Johannes Bobrowski

WHEN THE ROOMS

-by Johannes Bobrowski

when
the rooms are deserted
in which answers are given,

when
the walls,
and narrow passes fall,

shadows
fly out of
the trees,

when
the grass
beneath the feet
is abandoned,

white soles
tread
the wind

the bush of thorn flames,
I hear its voice
where no question was,

the waters
move
but I do not
thirst.


-translated from the German of Johannes Bobrowski (1917-1965) by Ruth and Matthew Mead

Can You Imagine - by Artur Międzyrzecki

CAN YOU IMAGINE

- by Artur Międzyrzecki (1922- 1996)

Absence
Can you imagine
Absence

Not as the the opposite
Of something that is
and breathes

Or a gap
in the universal
presence of things

Or a catchword
that calls for symbol's mediation
Or for dialectic quibbles

But as infinite
transparence
When no images

take root
A colourless
invisible monochromy

Absence
Something that's
not there

That's
not there
anymore.

* * *

- translated from the Polish of Artur Międzyrzecki by Stanislaw Baranczak & and Clare Cavanagh

Japanese Maple - by Clive James

Clive James, dynamic Australian poet, writer & media-host, who is now dying of cancer in England, (and a wordsmith with a grace and appreciativeness for life, though not a man of faith in any afterlife) writes: "Usually you're looking for ideas. This idea was looking for me. When the thing was put in the earth it wasn't in leaf yet. It was a long way to autumn. My daughter told me that come autumn the whole thing would be bright brilliant red. She showed me photographs of what it would look like and I got the idea straight away.
The genius of the poem is in the half-line of every stanza, Put together, these half-lines sound like a man desperately short of breath, waiting for the autumn of his death, watching his daughter's planted tree fill with life while losing time, losing air. Breath growing short - wheeze - it never ends - wheeze - what must I do - wheeze- as my mind dies." - 'But Clive's autumn came, the tree bloomed and he lived. So every day is extra time. He's already gone beyond the beyond left him here..."
So here is his latest fine appreciation of his last earthly things. "The void is coming," he says, "It really is going to be a void. There isn't anything out there. There's no heaven, no hell. Heaven and hell are here with us now. There's nothing in there. You really are going nowhere. ". Clive makes no mention of a soul, As if he sees nothing else but mind. But he still seeks to be fulfilled in truth, seeks yet for redemption, maybe even for sanctification, for he admits illness has brought him to be shed of wrongs and conceits. Yet I find him still conceited in that he has such an assured view of what cannot be materially known, still so sure of what cannot be assured. I pray for him, please pray with me.

* * *


JAPANESE MAPLE

- by Clive James, Australian poet

Your death, near now, is of an easy sort.

So slow a fading out brings no real pain.
Breath grows short
Is just uncomfortable. You feel the drain
Of energy, but thought and sight remain:

Enhanced, in fact. When did you ever see
So much sweet beauty as when fine rain falls
On that small tree

And saturates you brick back garden walls,
So many Amber Rooms and mirror halls?
Ever more lavish as the dusk descends
This glistening illuminates the air.
It never ends.

Whenever the rain comes it will be there,
Beyond my time, but now I take my share.

My daughter's choice, the maple tree is new.
Come autumn and its leaves will turn to flame.

What I must do
Is live to see that. That will end the game
For me, though life continues all the same:
Filling the double doors to bathe my eyes,
A final flood of colours will live on
As my mind dies,
Burned by my vision of a world that shone
So brightly at the last, and then was gone.

-As published in the Weekend Australian Magazine, 28 March 2015

WORLD'S DESIRE - by C S Lewis

WORLD'S DESIRE

- by C S Lewis

Love, there is a castle built in
a country desolate,
On a rock above a forest where the trees
are grim and great,
Blasted with the lightning sharp-giant boulders
strewn between,
And the mountains rise above,
and the cold ravine

Echoes to the crushing roar and thunder
of a mighty river
Raging down a cataract. Very tower
and forest quiver
And the grey wolves are afraid and the call
of birds is drowned,
And the thought and speech of man in
the boiling water's sound.

But upon the further side of the barren,
sharp ravine
With the sunlight on its turrets is
the castle seen,
Calm and very wonderful, white
above the green
Of the wet and waving forest,
slanted all away,

Because the driving Northern wind will not
rest by night or day.
Yet the towers are sure above, very
mighty is the stead,
The gates are made of ivory, the roofs
of copper red.

Round and round the warders grave walk
upon the walls for ever
And the wakeful dragons couch in
the ports of ivory,
Nothing is can trouble it, hate of the gods
nor man's endeavour,
And it shall be a resting-place, dear heart,
for you and me.

Through the wet and waving forest with an
age-old sorrow laden
Singing of the world's regret wanders wild
the faerie maiden,
Through the thistle and the brier, through
the tangles of the thorn,
Till her eyes be dim with weeping and her
homeless feet are torn.

Often to the castle gate up she looks
with vain endeavour,
For her soulless loveliness to the castle
winneth never.
But within the sacred court, hidden high
upon the mountain,
Wandering in the castle gardens lovely folk
enough there be,
Breathing in another air, drinking
of a purer fountain
And among that folk, beloved, there's a place
for you and me

* * *

- Clive Staples 'Jack' Lewis

Propoganda - by Eric Hoffer

PROPAGANDA

- Eric Hoffer

" Propaganda
does not deceive
 people;

it merely helps
them to deceive
themselves. "

Blackberry Picking - by Seamus Heaney

Wild Blackberries ripen late January & February in South-Eastern Australia

BLACKBERRY PICKING

- by Seamus Heaney (Ireland)

Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.

You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger

Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full

Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush

The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.

As The Ruin Falls - by C S Lewis

- the way of precious pain -

AS THE RUIN FALLS

- by C S Lewis.

All this is flashy rhetoric about
loving you.
I never had a selfless thought
since I was born.

I am mercenary and self-seeking
through and through:
I want God, you, all friends, merely
to serve my turn.

Peace, re-assurance, pleasure,
are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside
my proper skin:

I talk of love --a scholar's parrot
may talk Greek--
But, self-imprisoned, always end
where I begin.

Only that now you have taught me
(but how late) my lack.
I see the chasm. And everything
you are was making

my heart into a bridge by which I
might get back
from exile, and grow man. And now
the bridge is breaking.

For this I bless you as the ruin falls.
The pains
you give me are more precious than
all other gains

- Clive Staples Lewis.

Our passionate preoccupation - by Eric Hoffer

" Our passionate preoccupation
with the sky, the stars, and a
God somewhere in outer space is
a homing impulse. We are drawn
back to where we came from."

- Eric Hoffer

Cliché Came Out of its Cage - by C. S. Lewis

-to the new pagans (with Vichy Water in their veins)

Cliché Came Out of its Cage

- by C. S. Lewis

1

You said 'The world is going back to Paganism'.
Oh bright Vision! I saw our dynasty in the bar of the House
Spill from their tumblers a libation to the Erinyes,
And Leavis with Lord Russell wreathed in flowers, heralded with flutes,
Leading white bulls to the cathedral of the solemn Muses
To pay where due the glory of their latest theorem.
Hestia's fire in every flat, rekindled, burned before
The Lardergods. Unmarried daughters with obedient hands
Tended it
By the hearth the white-armd venerable mother
Domum servabat, lanam faciebat.
at the hour
Of sacrifice their brothers came, silent, corrected, grave
Before their elders; on their downy cheeks easily the blush
Arose (it is the mark of freemen's children) as they trooped,
Gleaming with oil, demurely home from the palaestra or the dance.
Walk carefully, do not wake the envy of the happy gods,
Shun Hubris. The middle of the road, the middle sort of men,
Are best. Aidos surpasses gold. Reverence for the aged
Is wholesome as seasonable rain, and for a man to die
Defending the city in battle is a harmonious thing.
Thus with magistral hand the Puritan Sophrosune
Cooled and schooled and tempered our uneasy motions;
Heathendom came again, the circumspection and the holy fears ...
You said it. Did you mean it? Oh inordinate liar, stop.

2

Or did you mean another kind of heathenry?
Think, then, that under heaven-roof the little disc of the earth,
Fortified Midgard, lies encircled by the ravening Worm.
Over its icy bastions faces of giant and troll
Look in, ready to invade it. The Wolf, admittedly, is bound;
But the bond will break, the Beast run free. The weary gods,
Scarred with old wounds the one-eyed Odin, Tyr who has lost a hand,
Will limp to their stations for the Last defence.
Make it your hope
To be counted worthy on that day to stand beside them;
For the end of man is to partake of their defeat and die
His second, final death in good company. The stupid, strong
Unteachable monsters are certain to be victorious at last,
And every man of decent blood is on the losing side.
Take as your model the tall women with yellow hair in plaits
Who walked back into burning houses to die with men,
Or him who as the death spear entered into his vitals
Made critical comments on its workmanship and aim.

* * *

Are these the Pagans you spoke of?
Know your betters and crouch, dogs;
You that have Vichy water in your veins
and worship the event
Your goddess History (whom
your fathers called the strumpet Fortune).

* * *

- Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963)

(LAST MESSAGE FROM) THE ENVOY OF MR COGITO - by Zbigniew Herbert

(LAST MESSAGE FROM) THE ENVOY OF MR COGITO

- by Zbigniew Herbert (1924~1998)


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
among those with their backs turned and those toppled in the dust

you were saved not in order to live
you have little time you must give testimony

be courageous when the mind deceives you be courageous
in the final account only this is important

and let your helpless Anger be like the sea
whenever your hear the voice of the insulted and beaten

let you sister Scorn not leave you
for the informers executioners cowards - they will win
they will go to your funeral with relief will throw a lump of earth
the woodborer will write your smoothed-over biography

and do not forgive truly it is not in your power
to forgive in the name of those betrayed at dawn

beware however of unnecessary pride
keep looking at your clown's face in the mirror
repeat: I was called - weren't there better ones than I

beware of dryness of heart love the morning spring
the bird with an unknown name the winter oak
light on a wall the splendour of the sky
they don't need your warm breath
they are there to say: no one will console you

be vigilant - when the light on the mountains gives the sign- arise and go
as long as blood turns in the breast your dark star

repeat old incantations of humanity fables and legends
because this is how you will attain the good you will not attain
repeat great words repeat them stubbornly
like those crossing the desert who perished in the sand

and they will reward you with what they have at hand
with the whip of laughter with murder on a garbage heap

go because only in this way you will be admitted to the company of cold skulls

to the company of your ancestors: Gilgamesh, Hector, Roland
the defenders of the kingdom without limit and the city of ashes

Be faithful Go.

* * *

Zbigniew Herbert (1924~1998)

- Polish poet, essayist, drama writer and moralist. A member of the Polish resistance movement, Home Army, during World War II, he is one of the best known and the most translated post-war Polish writers.

- Translated from the Polish by Zbigniew Herbert.

KAFKAESQUE

- by W H Auden

"Kafka is a great, perhaps the greatest master of the pure parable, a literary genre about which a critic can say very little worth saying. '
'Sometimes in real life one meets a character and thinks, "This man comes straight out of Shakespeare or Dickens," but nobody ever meets a Kafka character. On the other hand, one can have experiences which one recognizes as Kafkaesque, while one would never call an experience of one's own Dickensian or Shakespearian.
'During the war I spent a long and tiring day in the Pentagon. My errand done, I hurried down long corridors eager to get home, and came to a turnstile with a guard standing beside it. 'Where are you going?' said the guard. "I'm trying to get out ," I replied. 'You are out," he said. For the moment I felt I was K. '
'In all previous version of the Quest, the hero knows what he ought to do and his one problem is 'Can I do it?' He must acquire an I. But K is an I from the start, and in this fact alone, that he exists, irrespective of any gifts or deeds, lies his guilt. If the K of 'The Trail' were innocent, he would cease to be K and become nameless... "
"The world of the traditional Quest may be dangerous, but it is open: the hero can set off in any direction he fancies. But the Kafka world is closed; though it is almost devoid of sensory properties, it is an intensely physical world. The objects and faces in it may be vague, but the reader feels himself hemmed in by their suffocating presence: in no other imaginary world, I think, is everything so heavy. To take a single step exhausts the strength. The hero feels himself to be a prisoner and tries to escape but perhaps imprisonment is the proper state for which he was created, and freedom would destroy him."
" It is clear that Kafka did not think of himself as an artist in the traditional sense, that is to say, as a being dedicated to a particular function, whose personal existence is accidental to his artistic productions. If ever there was a man of whom it could be said that he "hungered and thirsted after righteousness," it was Kafka. Perhaps he came to regard what he had written as a personal device he employed in his search for God. "Writing," he once wrote, "is a form of prayer"....
"Kafka may be one of those writers who are doomed to be read by the wrong public. Those on whom their effect would be most beneficial are repelled and on those whom they most fascinate their effect may be dangerous, even harmful.
I am inclined to believe that one should only read Kafka when one is in an eupeptic state of physical and mental health and, in consequence, tempted to dismiss any scrupulous heart-searching as a morbid fuss. When one is in low spirits, one should probably keep away from him, for unless introspection is accompanied, as it always was with Kafka, by an equal passion for the good life, it all too easily degenerates into a spineless narcissistic fascination with one's own sin and weakness."



- W H Auden -

'The I without a Self' in The Dyer's Hand

The Thorn Bird - by Colleen McCullough

THE THORN BIRD

“There is a legend about a bird which sings just once in its life, more beautifully than any other creature on the face of the earth. From the moment it leaves the nest it searches for a thorn tree, and does not rest until it has found one. Then, it impales it's breast on the longest, sharpest thorn. But as it is dying, it rises above it's own agony to outsing the Lark and the Nightingale. The Thornbird pays it's life for that one song, and the whole world stills to listen, and God in his heaven smiles. For the best is only bought at the cost of great pain… Driven to the thorn with no knowledge of the dying to come. But when we press the thorn to our breast, we know, we understand.... and still, we do it."


― Colleen McCullough (1937-2015), The Thorn Birds

The Joys Of Life - by Franz Kafka

' The joys of this life are not its own, but
our dread of ascending to a higher life:
the torments of this life are not its own,
but our self-torment because of that dread.'


- Franz Kafka (1883-1924)

I DID NOT MANAGE TO SAVE -by Jerzy Ficowski

I DID NOT MANAGE TO SAVE

-by Jerzy Ficowski (1924-2006)

I did not manage to save
A single life

I did not know how to stop
A single bullet

And I wander around cemeteries
Which are not there

I look for words
Which are not there

I run
To help where no one called

To rescue after the event
I want to be on time

Even if I am too late

* * *

- translated from the Polish of Jerzy Ficowski (1924-2006) by Keith Bosely & Krystyna Wandycz

THE CHILDREN by Charles Reznikoff

THE CHILDREN:

- (from HOLOCAUST part 8.)

- Charles Reznikoff

Once, among the transports, was one with children
- two freight cars full.
The young men sorting out the belongings of those
taken to the gas chambers
had to undress the children - they were orphans -
and then take them to the 'lazarette.'
There the SS men shot them.

A large eight-wheeled car arrived at the hospital
where there were children;
in the two trailers - open trucks- were sick woman and men
lying on the floor.

The Germans threw the children into the trucks
from the second-floor and the balconies -
children from one year old to ten;
threw then upon the sick in the trucks.

Some of the children tried to hold on to the walls,
scratched at the walls with their nails;
but the shouting Germans
beat and pushed the children towards the windows.

* * *

The children arrived at the camp in buses,
guarded by gendarmes of the French Vichy government.
The buses stopped in the middle of the courtyard
and the children were quickly taken off
to make room for the buses following.

Frightened but quiet,
the children came down in groups of fifty or sixty to eighty;
the younger children holding on to older ones.

They were taken upstairs to empty halls -
without any furniture
and only dirty straw bags on the floor, full of bugs:
children as young as two, three, or four years of age,
all in torn clothes and dirty
for they had already spent two or three weeks in
other camps, uncared for
and were now on their way to a death camp in Poland.

Some had only one shoe.
Many had diarrhoea
but they were not allowed in the courtyard
where the water-closets were;
and, although there were chamber pots in the corridor
of each storey, these
were two large for the small children.

The women in the camp who
were also deportees and about to be taken
to other camps were in tears;
they would get up before sunrise
and go to the halls where the children were -
to mend the children's clothing;

but the women had no soap to clean the children,
no clean underwear to give them,
and only cold water with which to wash them.
When soup came for the children,

there were no spoons;
and it would be served in tins
but the tins were sometimes
too hot for the children to hold.

* * *

A visitor once stopped one of the children :
a boy of seven or eight, handsome, alert and happy.
He had only one shoe and the other foot was bare,
and his coat of good quality had no buttons.

The visitor asked him for his name
and then what his parents were doing;
and he said, 'Father is working in the office
and Mother is playing the piano.
Then he asked the visitor if he

would be joining his parents soon -
they always told the children they would be
leaving soon to rejoin their parents -
and the visitor answered, 'Certainly.
In a day or two.'

At that the child took out of his pocket
half an army biscuit he had been given in camp
and said, 'I am keeping this half for Mother' -
and then the child who had been
so gay burst into tears.

- Charles Reznikoff (1894-1976) - from 'Holocaust'

ONE FINE DAY -by János Pilinszky

ONE FINE DAY

-by János Pilinszky (1921-1981)


Always I have searched
for the mislaid tin spoon,
the bric-à-brac landscapes
of wretchedness,
hoping that one fine day
tears overcome me, and
I'm gently taken back
by our home's old yard,
it's ivy silence,
whisper.
Always, always I
have longed for home.

- János Pilinszky (1921-1981)

- translated from the Hungarian of János Pilinszky by Peter Jay

Reality - by Christopher Pointdexter

AT THE HOUSEFLY PLANET

- Christian Morgenstern (1871-1914)

Upon the housefly planet
the fate of the human is grim:
for what he does here to the housefly,
the fly does there unto him.

To paper with honey cover
the humans there adhere,
while others are doomed to hover
near death in vapid beer.

However, one practice of humans
the flies will not undertake:
they will not bake us in muffins
nor swallow us by mistake.


* * *

-translated from the German of Christian Morgensern to English by Max Knight.

THE IMPOSSIBLE FACT - Christian Morgenstern

More of the wonderful morning-star vision from the socially philosophical mind of Christian Morgenstern who seems to have anticipated and exposed a century earlier the mindset of modern planning departments with nanny-State concerns for "Occupational Health and Safety' & other shadows of the cult of the command-bureaucracy. And, a pretty impressive understanding of our fossil-fuel fired traffic catastrophes in one who died in 1914

THE IMPOSSIBLE FACT

- Christian Morgenstern (1871-1914)

Palmstroem, old, an aimless rover,
walking in the wrong direction
at a busy intersection
is run over.

"How," he says, his life restoring
and with pluck his death ignoring,
"can an accident like this
ever happen? What's amiss?

"Did the state administration
fail in motor transportation?
Did police ignore the need
for reducing driving speed?

"Isn't there a prohibition,
barring motorized transmission
of the living to the dead?
Was the driver right who sped . . . ?"

Tightly swathed in dampened tissues
he explores the legal issues,
and it soon is clear as air:
Cars were not permitted there!

And he comes to the conclusion:
His mishap was an illusion,
for, he reasons pointedly,
that which must not, can not be.



* * *
translated from the German to English by Max Knight

THE PICKET FENCE - by Christian Morgenstern

It takes a nonsense poet to make real sense of this mad mad world. Here's a view into the wonderful if surreal world of visionary Christian Morgenstern who seems to be well aware of blue-sky venture schemes and pulls the plug from the bathrooms of collectively-funded fictitious construction schemes, albiet ones attracting rip-offs to fund an elite in rootless ambition, exilic travel and wealth. Otherwise, also seeing, he removed himself from dangerous ones, for he left militaristic Germany for its warmongering, and died in Italy.

THE PICKET FENCE

- by Christian Morgenstern (1871-1914)

One time there was a picket fence
with space to gaze from hence to thence.

An architect who saw this sight
approached it suddenly one night,

removed the spaces from the fence,
and built of them a residence.

The picket fence stood there dumbfounded
with pickets wholly unsurrounded,

a view so loathsome and obscene,
the Senate had to intervene.

The architect, however, flew
to Afri- or Americoo.


* * *

- from the German, translation to English by Max Knight

THOSE MEN, SO POWERFUL (1990)

-by Stanislaw Baranczak

Those men, so powerful, always shown
somewhat from below by crouching cameramen, who lift
a heavy foot to crush me, no, to climb
the steps of the plane, who raise a hand
to strike me, no, to greet the crowds
obediently waving little flags, men who sign
my death warrant, no, just a trade
agreement which is promptly dried by a servile blotter.

those men so brave, with such upraised foreheads
standing in an open car, who
so courageously visit the battle-line of harvest operations,
step into a furrow as though entering a trench,
those men with hard hands capable of banging
the rostrum and slapping the backs
of people bowed in obeisance who have just this moment been pinned
to their best suits with a medal,

always
you were so afraid of them,
you were so small
compared to them, who always stood above
you, on steps, rostrums, platforms,
and yet it is enough for just one instant to stop
being afraid, or let's say
begin to be a little less afraid,
to become convinced that they are the ones,
that they are the ones who are afraid the most


* * *

From "Selected Poems: The Weight of the Body" (Triquarterly Books/Northwestern University/Another Chicago Pres
http://kdhnews.com/…/article_11e59f09-5144-5766-9d60-3bd457…

Covering Up - by Reiner Kunze

COVERING UP

- by Reiner Kunze

Everything can
be retouched

except

the negative
inside us.


* * *
translated from the German of Reiner Kunze by Michael Hamburger

SILENCE

- by Tymoteuscz Karpowicz (1921~ 2005 )

Silence is
sucking the earth dry

in the disembowelled
drum of a valley
echo-roots wither
too weak to raise
even one breath

in terror
I clutch at hands
for god's sake
let us breathe

let us breathe even if
not with our own strength
let us live even if
not with our own hearts

when stones arise
and sail the sky
in place of birds

let us beat even if not
with our own arms

if only to make the air
around us tremble.


* * *

- translated by Jan Darowski from the Polish of Tymoteuscz Karpowicz - (1921 Wilno / Vilius, Poland ~ 2005 Oak Park, Chicago, USA))

THE DOG WHICH BARKED ITSELF OUT

- by Tymoteuscz Karpowicz (1921~ 2005 )

````

Fidēlis barked
himself to his
kennel from his
head to his tail

he would've barked
on but came to
an end measuring
four paws across

now Fidēlis
even censors
the light of
the moon

not a dog
but an official case
with the barking
taken out

the chain next
to the cabinet
has a ring
of irony.

* * *

based on translations by Andrzey Busza and Bogdan Czaykowski from the Polish of Tymoteuscz Karpowicz - (1921 Wilno / Vilnius, Poland ~ 2005 Oak Park, Chicago, USA)

THE PENCIL'S SLEEP

- by Tymoteuscz Karpowicz (1921~ 2005 )

when the pencil undresses
for sleep he firmly resolves
to sleep stiff and black
the innate inflexibility
of all the piths of the
world helps him
the spinal chord
of the pencil will
break rather than bend
he never dreams
of waves
or hair
only of soldiers
standing to attention
or coffins
what stretches
out in him
is straight
what stretches
beyond is
crooked.
Goodnight.

* * *

translated by Andrzey Busza and Bogdan Czaykowski from the Polish of Tymoteuscz Karpowicz - (1921 Wilno / Vilnius, Poland ~ 2005 Oak Park, Chicago, USA)

BRIEF THOUGHTS ON CATS GROWING ON TREES

BRIEF THOUGHTS ON CATS GROWING ON TREES

- by Miroslav Holub [1923-1998]

In the days when
Moles still held their general meetings
and were able to see better, it happened
that they wished to know what existed
above.

And they elected
a commission to investigate.

The commission
delegated a sharp-sighted, quick-footed
mole. Leaving his bit of mother-earth
he sighted a tree and a bird sitting on it.

And so a theory was formulated that up there
birds grew on trees. But
some moles though it
too simple. And they selected another mole
to find out whether birds grow on trees.

It was evening hour and cats
miaowed in the trees. Miaowing cats
grow on trees, reported the second mole.
And so originated an alternative theory
about cats.

The conflicting theories
disturbed the sleep
of a neurotic old member of the commission.
He crept out to have a look himself.
It was night and pitch dark.

Both wrong, announced the venerable mole.
Birds and cats are optical illusions caused
by the refraction of light. In reality, above
is the same as below, only the earth is thinner and
the upper roots of the trees whisper something,
but only a little.

And there the matter rested.

Since then moles have remained underground,
do not appoint commissions nor
assume the existence of cats,

and if they do, then only a little.

* * *

- Miroslav Holub [1923-1998] , Czech scientist, poet and immunologist,
Translated from the Czech by Ian and Jarmila Milner

Be Careful

BE CAREFUL

- by Natan Zach (b.1930 Berlin)

Be careful. Open your life
Only to the wind that has
Touched distance.
Suffer the absent.
Speak up, only in the nights
Of solitude.
Know the day,
The fixed season, the moment,
And don’t beg.
Pay
Attention to what
Is still.
Learn to bless
The shadow just
Beneath the skin.
Don’t hide in words.
Sit with the counsel
Of worms,
And the wisdom
Of the maggot.
Don’t expect.

* * *

translated from the German and Hebrew of Natan Zach by Peter Everwine and Shalumit Yasny-Starkman

THE CAUTION

- by Miroslav Holub

A tree enters and says with a bow:
‘I am a tree.’
A black tear falls from the sky and says:
‘I am a bird.’
Down a spider’s web
something like love
comes near
and says:
‘I am silence.’
But by the blackboard sprawls
a national democratic
horse in his waistcoat
and repeats,
pricking his ears on every side
repeats and repeats
‘I am the engine of history
and
we all
love
progress
and
courage
and
the fighter’s wrath.’
Under the classroom door
trickles
a thin stream of blood.
For here begins
the massacre
of the innocents.

* * *

Translated from the Czech of Miroslav Holub, scientist, poet and immunologist, by Ian and Jarmila Milner

Gods- from mythology

GODS (from Mythology)

- by Zbigniew Herbert (1924~1998)

First there was
a god of night and tempest,
a black idol without eyes
before whom they leapt, naked
and smeared with blood.

Later on, in times
of the republic, there were
many gods with wives, children,
creaking beds, and harmlessly
exploding thunderbolts.

At the end only superstitious
neurotics carried in their pockets
little statues of salt, representing
the god of irony. There was no
greater god at that time.

Then came the barbarians.
They too valued the little god
of irony. They would crush it
under their heels and add it
to their dishes.

* * *

- Zbigniew Herbert (1924~1998) Polish poet, essayist, drama writer and moralist. A member of the Polish resistance movement, Home Army, during World War II, he is one of the best known and the most translated post-war Polish writers. - Translated from the Polish by Czeslaw Milosz.

THE MONSTER OF MISTER COGITO

Revisiting the Ancient Spiritual Battle of Christendom: St George & the Dragon

THE MONSTER OF MISTER COGITO

- by Zbigniew Herbert (1924~1998)

1

Lucky Saint George
from his knight's saddle
could exactly evaluate
the strength and movements of the dragon
the first principle of strategy
is to assess the enemy accurately

Mr Cogito
is in a worse position
he sits in the low
saddle of a valley
covered with thick fog

through fog it is impossible to perceive
fiery eyes
greedy claws
jaws

through fog
one sees only
the shimmering of nothingness

the monster of Mr Cogito
has no measurements
it is difficult to describe
escapes definition

it is like an immense depression
spread out over the country

it can't be pierced
with a pen

with an argument
or spear

were it not for its suffocating weight
and the death it sends down
one would think
it is the hallucination
of a sick imagination
but it exists

for certain it exists
like carbon monoxide it fills
houses temples markets

poisons wells
destroys the structures of the mind
covers bread with mould

the proof of the existence of the monster
is its victims

it is not direct proof
but sufficient

2

reasonable people say
we can live together
with the monster

we only have to avoid
sudden movements
sudden speech

if there is a threat assume
the form of a rock or a leaf

listen to wise Nature
recommending mimicry

that we breathe shallowly
pretend we aren't there

Mr Cogito however
does not want a life of make-believe
he would like to fight
with the monster
on firm ground

so he walks out at dawn
into a sleepy suburb
carefully equipped
with a long sharp object

he calls to the monster
on the empty streets
he offends the monster

provokes the monster
like a bold skirmisher
of an army that doesn't exist

he calls -
come out contemptible coward

through the fog
one sees only
the huge snout of nothingness

Mr Cogito wants to enter
the uneven battle
it ought to happen
possibly soon

before there is
a fall from inertia
an ordinary death without glory
suffocation from formlessness


* * *

Zbigniew Herbert (1924~1998) - Polish poet, essayist, drama writer and moralist. A member of the Polish resistance movement, Home Army, during World War II, he is one of the best known and the most translated post-war Polish writers. - Translated from the Polish by Zbigniew Herbert.

REPORT FROM THE BESIEGED CITY

- by Zbigniew Herbert (1924~1998)

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

I am supposed to be exact but I don't know
when the invasion began
two hundred years ago in December in September
perhaps yesterday at dawn

- everyone here suffers from a loss of the sense of time
all we have left is the place
the attachment to the place
we still rule over the ruins of temples
spectres of gardens and houses
if we lose the ruins nothing will be left

I write as I can in the rhythm of interminable weeks

Monday: empty storehouses a rat became the unit of currency

Tuesday: the mayor murdered by unknown assailants

Wednesday: negotiations for a cease-fire the enemy has imprisoned our messengers - we don't know where they are held that is the place of torture

Thursday: after a stormy meeting a majority of voices rejected
the motion of the spice merchants for unconditional surrender

Friday: the beginning of the plague

Saturday: our invincible defender N.N. committed suicide

Sunday: no more water we drove back an attack at the eastern gate called the Gate of the Alliance

all of this is monotonous
I know it can't move anyone
I avoid any commentary
I keep a tight hold on my emotions
I write about the facts
only they it seems are appreciated in foreign markets

that thanks to the war we have
raised a new species of children
our children don’t like fairy tales they play at killing
awake and asleep they dream of soup of bread and bones
just like dogs and cats

in the evening I like to wander near the outposts of the city
along the frontier of our uncertain freedom.
I look at the swarms of soldiers below their lights
I listen to the noise of drums barbarian shrieks

truly it is inconceivable the City is still defending itself
the siege has lasted a long time the enemies must take turns
nothing unites them except the desire for our extermination
Goths the Tartars Swedes troops of the Emperor
regiments of the Transfiguration
who can count them

the colours of their banners change
like the forest on the horizon
from delicate bird's yellow in spring
through green through red to winter's black
and so in the evening released from facts I can think
about distant ancient matters for example our
friends beyond the sea I know they sincerely sympathize

they send us flour lard sacks of comfort and good advice
they don’t even know their fathers betrayed us
our former allies at the time of the second Apocalypse

their sons are blameless they deserve our gratitude
therefore we are grateful
they have not experienced a siege as long as eternity
those struck by misfortune are always alone
the defenders of the Dalai Lama
the Kurds the Afghan mountaineers

now as I write these words the advocates of conciliation
have won the upper hand over the party of inflexibles
a normal hesitation of moods fate still hangs in the balance

cemeteries grow larger
the number of defenders is smaller
yet the defence continues
it will continue to the end
and if the City falls but a single man escapes
he will carry the City within himself on the roads of exile
he will be the City

we look in the face of hunger
the face of fire face of death
worst of all - the face of betrayal
and only our dreams have not been humiliated

* * *

Zbigniew Herbert (1924~1998) - Polish poet, essayist, drama writer and moralist. A member of the Polish resistance movement, Home Army, during World War II, he is one of the best known and the most translated post-war Polish writers. - Translated from the Polish by Zbigniew Herbert.

Picture: The City of God; The City of Man, - by Agosthino

FROM THE TOP OF THE STAIRS

- by Zbigniew Herbert

Of course
those who are standing at the top of the stairs
know
they know everything

with us it's different
sweepers of squares
hostages of a better future
those at the top of the stairs
appear to us rarely
with a hushing finger always at the mouth

we are patient
our wives darn the sunday shirts
we talk of food rations
soccer prices of shoes
while on saturday we tilt the head backward
and drink

we aren't those
who clench their fists
brandish chains
talk and ask questions
in a fever of excitement
urging to rebel
incessantly talking and asking questions

here is their fairy tale -
we will dash at the stairs
and capture them by storm
the heads of those who were standing at the top
will roll down the stairs
and at last we will gaze
at what can be seen from those heights
what future
what emptiness

we don't desire the view
of rolling heads
we know how easily heads grow back
and at the top there will always remain
one or three
while at the bottom it is black from brooms and shovels

sometimes we dream
those at the top of the stairs
come down
that is to us
and as we are chewing bread over the newspaper
they say

- now let's talk
man to man
what the posters shout out isn't true
we carry the truth in tightly locked lips
it is cruel and much too heavy
so we bear the burden by ourselves
we aren't happy
we would gladly stay
here

these are dreams of course
they can come true
or not come true
so we will
continue to cultivate
our square of dirt
square of stone

with a light head
a cigarette behind the ear
and not a drop of hope in the heart

* * *

Zbigniew Herbert (1924~1998) - Polish poet, essayist, drama writer and moralist. A member of the Polish resistance movement, Home Army, during World War II, he is one of the best known and the most translated post-war Polish writers.
- Translated from the Polish by Zbigniew Herbert.