Free The Collected Poems by Zbigniew Herbert Page A

still warm body would be resurrected in the word. Now I see words dying, I know thatthere is no limit to decay. What will remain after us are fragments of words scattered on the black earth. Accent signs over nothingness and ash.
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WASP
    When the flowered tablecloth, honey, and fruit were mowed from the table in one fell swoop, the wasp made an attempt to fly off. Wrapped in stifling clouds of net curtain, it went on buzzing for a long time. Finally it made it to the window. Again and again it beat its weakening body against the cold welded air of the pane. In the last movement of its wings there lingered the same faith that the body’s unrest can raise a wind carrying us to longed-for worlds.
    You who have stood under a beloved’s window, you who have seen your happiness on display—can you find it in yourselves to extract the sting of this death?
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MADWOMAN
    Her burning look holds me fast as if in an embrace. She utters words mixed up with dreams. She invites me. You will be happy if you believe and hitch your wagon to a star. She is gentle when breast-feeding the clouds; but when calm abandons her, she runs along the seashore and waves her arms in the air.
    Reflected in her eyes I see two angels standing at my shoulders: the pale, malevolent angel of Irony and the mighty, loving angel of Schizophrenia.
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THE PARADISE OF THE THEOLOGIANS
    Alleys, long alleys bordered by trees which are as carefully trimmed as in an English park. Sometimes an angel passes there. His hair is carefully curled, his wings rustle with Latin. He holds in his hands a neat instrumentcalled a syllogism. He walks quickly without stirring the air or sand. He passes in silence by the stony symbols of virtues, the pure qualities, the ideas of objects and many other completely unimaginable things. He never disappears from sight because here there are no perspectives. Orchestras and choirs keep silent yet music is present. The place is empty. The theologians talk spaciously. This also is supposed to be a proof.
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THE DEAD
    As a result of being confined in dark and unaired accommodation their faces have been radically changed. They would love to speak but sand devoured their lips. Only occasionally do they clutch the air with their fists and try to raise their heads clumsily like infants. Nothing can cheer them, neither chrysanthemums nor candles. They can’t reconcile themselves to their condition, the condition of things.
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CRYPT
    I can still adjust the devotional picture so your reconciliation with necessity may be known, and the scarf as well, so that the inscription “to my beloved” might be a cause of tears. But what to do with the fly, the black fly that creeps into the half-closed mouth and carries out the remaining crumbs of the soul?
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AFTER THE CONCERT
    Above the symphony’s severed head still hangs the iron sword of the tutti. The empty music stands are like bare stems from which a cantilena has fallen, petal by petal. You see three levels of silence: the church like a cooling barrel of thunder; a clutch of basses sleeping against the wall likedrunken peasants; and lower down, all the way down, a wooden curlicue shaved off by a bow.
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HELL
    Counting from the top: a chimney, antennae, a warped tin roof. Through a round window you see a girl trapped in threads whom the moon forgot to draw in and left to the mercy of gossipmongers and spiders. Farther down a woman reads a letter, cools her face with powder, and goes on reading. On the first floor a young man is walking back and forth thinking: how can I go outdoors with these bitten lips and shoes falling apart? The café downstairs is empty; it’s still morning.
    Just one couple in a corner. They are holding hands. He says: “We will always be together. Waiter, a black coffee and a lemonade, please.” The waiter goes behind the curtain and once there, bursts out laughing.
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HOTEL
    The carpet is too soft. The palm tree in the