Zbigniew Herbert

A blonde girl is bent over a poem.
With a pencil sharp as a lancet she transfers the words to a blank page and changes them into strokes, accents, caesuras.
The lament of a fallen poet now looks like a salamander eaten away by…

Cup your hands to scoop up sleepas you would draw a grain of waterand the forest will come: a green clouda birch trunk like a chord of lightand a thousand eyelids flutteringwith forgotten leafy speechthen you will recall the white morningwhen you…

When my older brother came back from war he had on his forehead a little silver star and under the star an abyss a splinter of shrapnel hit him at Verdun or perhaps at Grünwald (he’d forgotten the details) he used to talk much in many languages…

Our fear does not wear a night shirt does not have owl’s eyes does not lift a casket lid does not extinguish a candle does not have a dead man’s face either our fear is a scrap of paper found in a pocket ‘warn Wójcik the place on Dluga Street is…

First there was a god of night and tempest, a black idol without eyes, before whom they leaped, naked and smeared with blood.
Later on, in the times of the republic, there were many gods with wives, children, creaking beds, and harmlessly…

Jan came this morning —I dreamt of my father he says he was riding in an oak coffin I walked next to the hearse and father turned to me: you dressed me nicely and the funeral is very beautiful at this time of year so many flowers it must have…

I would like to describe the simplest emotion joy or sadness but not as others do reaching for shafts of rain or sun I would like to describe a light which is being born in me but I know it does not resemble any star for it is not so bright not…