The Collected Poems (34 page)

“So many miracles,” 364–66

“So many sleepless nights so many diapers,” 530

“so many years,” 327–28

“Sometimes Mr Cogito calls to mind, not without emotion, his youthful march on perfection,” 276

Song, 541

Speculations on the Subject of Barabbas, 449

Stake, 532

Stars' Chosen Ones, The, 79

Still Life, 145

Stool (M/S), 41

Stuck in the Mind, 544

Study of the Object (M/S), 193–96

Substance, 126

“Suddenly you notice there's nothing in your glass; you're raising an abyss to your lips,” 138

Suicide, 148

“Sunday,” 391–96

“Sure there's plenty,” 557

“Sweetness bears a flower's name—,” 21–22

Tale, A (M/S), 77

Tale of a Nail, 457

Tamarisk (M/S), 200

“Teach us too to fold our fingers,” 115

Tenderness, 569

Testament, 28

“Thanks to energetic action taken by the government, firefighters and youth organizations,” 168

“Thank you Adam for your card from Fryburg,” 483–84

“that one from II A—,” 110

“That's a poet,” 79

“That wall,” 27

“The best fairy tales are about how we were little,” 130

“the bullet I fired,” 430–31

“the caretaker ran out with the big bell,” 109–10

“The carpet is too soft,” 135

“The castles and cities he leased to masters of alchemy and fraudulent magicians,” 248

“The cold blue sky like a stone on which angels,” 26

“The condottieri of Cyrus the Foreign Legion,” 382

“The days were the color of amaranth” (M/S), 5

“The double truth of all the senses—,” 64

“The elements went in front: water carrying silt,” 43

“the finale,” 454–56

“The forests were on fire—” (M/S), 3

“The front page reports,” 285–86

“The gods gathered in a barracks just outside town,” 255

“The hen is the best example of what living constantly with humans leads to” (M/S), 141

“The High Castle,” 553

“The hill facing Minos's palace is like a Greek theater,” 252

“The inquisitors are in our midst” (M/S), 149

“the intricate coronations,” 21–22

“The king's beard on which sauces and ovations” (M/S), 243

“The left leg is normal,” 272

“The lowest circle of hell,” 329

“The lucky Saint George,” 375–78

“The messenger awaited a despairingly long time,” 402

“The moment has come it is time to say farewell,” 435

“The most beautiful is the object” (M/S), 193–96

“The new gods followed the Roman army at a decent distance,” 251

“the note in the Voice of the Pacific,” 393–95

“Then your homeland will seem too small for you,” 437–38

“The Old Masters,” 345–46

“The oration of worlds is unflagging,” 295

“The pebble” (M/S), 197

“The poet imitates the voices of birds” (M/S), 77

“the poet of a certain age,” 300

“The priests have a problem,” 312–13

“The priests lead the peasants out onto an elevated plain,” 246

“The real duel of Apollo” (M/S), 165–66

“There are those who grow” (M/S), 78

“There goes a woman,” 53–54

“There's a sudden island Sea sculpture cradle,” 225

“there's a terrible silence,” 383–84

“The Sanhedrin did not judge at night,” 237

“the sensible say,” 376–78

“Theseus is passing through a sea,” 570

“The seventh angel” (M/S), 96–97

“The singer's lips are welded fast,” 9

“The sleep of fish is beyond imagination,” 145

“The stone is well-preserved An inscription (bad Latin),” 254

“the tensely,” 546–47

“The three-dimensional illustrations from pitiful textbooks,” 249

“The tower is fifty ells down and the same up,” 137–38

“the trouble is,” 303

“The true history of the prince Minotaur is told in the yet undeciphered script Linear A,” 308

“The tsar our little father had grown old, very old” (M/S), 151–52

“The vast space of little planets,” 33

“The water is shallow,” 139

“The well is in the middle of the square among apartment buildings, pigeons, and towers,”132

“The whole royal family was living in one room at that time” (M/S), 178

“the women in our street,” 7–8

“the Wunderlich family quartet,” 538

“They have ugly mugs, but their hands are dexterous, accustomed to hammer and nail, iron and wood,” 263

“They just go on sitting on the spreading branches of trees,” 179

“they rebuilt the poet,” 113

“They say—,” 493–95

“They say that he went deaf—but it isn't true,” 386

“They shave with a razor,” 137

They Sit in Trees, 179

“They take them out in the morning” (M/S), 106–8

“They went down gorges of former streets,” 18

They Who Lost, 297

“They who lost now dance with bells on their ankles,” 297

“They who sailed at dawn,” 40

“This autumn the trees have peace at last,” 181

“This book is a gentle reminder it does not permit me,” 469

“This is he—Arion—” (M/S), 55–56

“This is the most endearing spot the body's city,” 561

“This little cosmology of fired clay,” 307

Thomas, 550

Thorns and Roses, 74

“those standing on the right bank,” 318–19

“those who paint interiors of old barber-shops” (M/S), 80–81

“Those who paint small mirrors of lakes” (M/S), 80–81

“Thoughts cross the mind,” 287

Three Poems by Heart, 6–8

Three Studies on the Subject of Realism (M/S), 80–81

“Through owlish darkness,” 16

“Through seven mountain frontiers” (M/S), 170–72

Time, 558

“Tirelessly they work in me my ancestors' hands,” 475

To Apollo, 14–15

To Athena, 16

To Czeslaw Milosz, 508

“today we know exactly,” 388–90

To Extract Objects, 294

“To extract objects from their majestic silence takes either a ploy or a crime,” 294

To Henryk Elzenberg on the Centennial of His Birth, 467–68

To His Fist, 114

To Marcus Aurelius (M/S), 19

To My Bones (M/S), 205

Tongue (M/S), 210

“Too old to carry arms and fight like the others—,” 416–18

To Piotr Vuji?i?, 486

To Pompeii's Aid, 168

To Ryszard Krynicki—A Letter, 356–57

To the Fallen Poets, 9

To the Hungarians, 129

To the River, 344

Touch, 64

Tower, 137–38

“To whom do I play? Closed shutters,” 223–24

To Yehuda Amichai, 489

Trembles and Heaves, 33

Trial, 397–98

Troubles of a Minor Creator, 38–39

“Truly my infidelity is great and hard to forgive,” 458–63

Tusculum, 250

Two Drops (M/S), 3

“Two perhaps three” (M/S), 201–2

Two Prophets. A Voice Test, 524

“Under walls white as a birch forest grow the ferns of paintings,” 141

“Very quickly the smell of sulfur left him,” 248

“Veterans of forty-day floods,” 59–60

Violin, 130

Voice (M/S), 67–68

Wagon, 450–52

Wall, 136

War, 136

Warsaw Cemetery, 27

“Was Jean-Jacques the Tender aware of the pitcher plant,” 425

Wasp, 133

Water Horse, 198–99

Wawel, 44

Weather, 220

“We fall asleep on words,” 264–65

“We halted in a town the host” (M/S), 229

“we lay side by side,” 411–15

“We live in the narrow bed of our flesh” (M/S), 215

Well, 132

“We stand against the wall,” 136

“We stand on the border,” 129

“we take a shortcut,” 553–54

“We walk by the sea-shore” (M/S), 101

“What a thick mist,” 94

“What became of Barabbas? I ask but no one knows,” 449

“what business is it of mine,” 523

“What has become of the soul,” 71

What I Saw, 337

“What is he doing,” 450–52

“What is that city bay street river,” 438

What Mr Cogito Thinks of Hell, 329

What Our Dead Do, 75–76

“What the princess likes best is lying face down on the floor,” 130

“what was the death that lay ahead:” 233–34

“What will happen,” 268

“What would have become of me had I not met you—Master Henryk,” 467–68

“Whelp of the empty realms,” 38–39

“When Achilles pierced Penthesilea's breast with his short sword, he twisted it—as is proper—three times in the wound,” 506

“When he gave his great speech the prosecutor,” 397–98

“When he stands before them” (M/S), 238–39

“when I mount a chair,” 158

“when I sleep,” 525–26

“When I was very ill shame abandoned me,” 490

“When my older brother” (M/S), 90–91

“When the flowered tablecloth, honey, and fruit were mowed from the table in one fell swoop,” 133

“When the horror subsided the floodlights went out” (M/S), 227

“when the platoon” (M/S), 106–7

When the World Stands Still (M/S), 218

“When years later I returned to Babylon it had changed,” 370

“When you come to know don't speak of knowing,” 437

“Where is Dionysus sailing across a sea as red as wine,” 507

“White,” 478–80

White Eyes, 10

White Stone, 85–86

“Who ever thought a warm neck would become an armrest, or legs eager for flight and joy could stiffen into four simple stilts?” (M/S), 217

“who knows,” 366

“Who wrote our faces chicken pox for sure,” 271

Why the Classics (M/S), 266–67

Wind and the Rose, The (M/S), 140

Winter Garden, 42, 235–36

“With a light step,” 160–61

“With deliberate carelessness, shapes violently torn from life are scattered on the table: a fish, an apple, a bunch of vegetables mixed with flowers,” 145

“With great bounds—,” 453–56

“With that little boy unmoving like the Eleatic arrow,” 369

“with the inexorable,” 499–500

Wit Stwosz: The Dormition of the Virgin, 440

Wolf and the Lamb, The, 136–37

Wolves, 476

Wooden Bird (M/S), 156–57

Wooden Die (M/S), 207

Wringer (M/S), 149

Wristwatch (M/S), 260

Writing, 158

“Years are shorter and shorter,” 367–68

“You can cross the earth by donkey,” 95

“You cannot pass on the knowledge,” 39

“You look at my hands,” 12

ZBIGNIEW HERBERT
(1924–1998) was a spiritual leader of the anticommunist movement in Poland. His work has been translated into almost every European language, and he won numerous prizes, including the Jerusalem Prize and the T. S. Eliot Prize. His books include
Selected Poems, Report from the Besieged City and Other Poems, Mr Cogito, Still Life with a Bridle,
and
King of the Ants,
all published by Ecco.

ALISSA VALLES
is a poet and translator who lives in Warsaw. Her work has appeared in the
Antioch Review,
the
Iowa Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, TriQuarterly, Verse,
and elsewhere.

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

Report from the Besieged City and Other Poems

Selected Poems

Still Life with a Bridle

Mr Cogito

King of the Ants

Barbarian in the Garden

THE COLLECTED POEMS
: 1956–1998.
Copyright © 2007 The Estate of Zbigniew Herbert.
Translation copyright © 2007 by Alissa Valles.
Introduction copyright © 2007 by Adam Zagajewski.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

EPub Edition © AUGUST 2010 ISBN: 978-0-062-04615-4

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For information, address HarperCollins Publishers, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022.

FIRST ECCO PAPERBACK PUBLISHED
2008.

Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition as follows:

   Herbert, Zbigniew.
      The Collected Poems: 1956–1998 / Zbigniew Herbert.—1st ed.
         p. cm.
      ISBN: 978-0-06-078390-7
      ISBN-10: 0-06-078390-7
      Includes index.

      PG7167.E64 A2 2006
      891.8/5173 22                                       2006040856

ISBN: 978-0-06-078395-2 (pbk)

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