Free The Collected Poems by Zbigniew Herbert

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    we stand on the border
that is called reason
and we gaze into a fire
and we marvel at death
    1956
    PROSE POEMS
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VIOLIN
    A violin is naked. It has skinny little arms. Clumsily it tries to cover itself with them. It sobs for shame and cold. That’s why. Not, as the music reviewers say, to make it more beautiful. That’s simply not true.
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BUTTON
    The best fairy tales are about how we were little. I most like ones like how I once swallowed an ivory button. My mother was crying.
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PRINCESS
    What the princess likes best is lying face down on the floor. The floor smells of dust, wax, and God knows what else. In the cracks the princess hides her treasures—a red coral bead, a silver thread, and something else I can’t tell you because I took an oath.
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A MOTHER AND HER LITTLE BOY
    In a cabin at the edge of the wood there once lived a mother and her little boy. They loved each other. Very much. They watched the sun set together and cultivated domestic hours. They didn’t want to die, either. But Mother died. The boy was left behind. In fact it was an old carpet by the bed.
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DRUNKS
    Drunks are people who drink to the dregs in one draft. But they wince because in the dregs they see themselves again. Through the glass of the bottle they observe faraway worlds. If they had stronger heads and better taste, they would be astronomers.
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HARPSICHORD
    In fact it is a cupboard made of walnut in a black frame. You might think that it is used to keep yellowing letters, Gypsy coins, and ribbons—whereas there’s nothing but a cuckoo entangled in a thicket of silver leaves.
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OBJECTS
    Inanimate objects are always correct and cannot, unfortunately, be reproached with anything. I have never observed a chair shift from one foot to another, or a bed rear on its hind legs. And tables, even when they are tired, will not dare to bend their knees. I suspect that objects do this from pedagogical considerations, to reprove us constantly for our instability.
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SHELL
    In front of the mirror in my parents’ bedroom there lay a pink shell. I stole up to it on tiptoe and in a swift motion, raised it to my ear. I wanted to catch it when it wasn’t pining with its monotonous sound. Though I was little, I knew that even if you love someone very much, it sometimes happens that you forget all about it.
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COUNTRY
    In the far corner of this old map there’s a country I long for. It is the homeland of apples, hills, lazy rivers, pungent wine, and love. Unfortunately a great spider spun a web over it and closed off the dream’s border control booths with sticky saliva.
    Always the same old story: an angel with a fiery sword, a spider, conscience.
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CAT
    It’s completely black, but has an electric tail. When it sleeps in the sun it’s the blackest thing you can possibly imagine. Even in its sleep it catches frightened little mice. You can tell by the claws that grow from its paws. It’s terribly winsome and wicked. It swipes nestlings from the tree before they’re ripe.
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DWARFS
    Dwarfs grow in the forest. They have a peculiar smell and white beards. They appear alone. If a cluster of them could be gathered, dried, and hung over the door—we might have some peace.
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WELL
    The well is in the middle of the square among apartment buildings, pigeons, and towers. In a vein of the cold well casing a spring bubbles up. It gurgles anxiously, as if it were about to dry up.
    On top there is a carving of a stone dog’s sleep. The sandstone head lies between two paws. Its sleep is profound. It doesn’t give a toss about the end of the world.
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EPISODE IN A LIBRARY
    A blond girl is bent over a poem. With a pencil sharp as a lance she transfers words onto a white sheet of paper and translates them into lines, accents, caesuras. The fallen poet’s lament now looks like a salamander gnawed by ants.
    When we carried him off under fire, I believed his