Free The Collected Poems by Zbigniew Herbert Page B

lobby is also implausible. The
maître
gives us a prolonged look and turns our passports over in his hands. “Those rings under the eyes, those rings. I once knew a merchant from Smyrna, he had a protruding tooth too. In these times you have to be terribly careful—the informers and scorpions are everywhere.”
    In the elevator we face a mirror, but at the first rattle we see how silver mildew appears where our faces were.
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SEVEN ANGELS
    Every morning seven angels appear. They come in without knocking. One of them snatches my heart out of my chest. He brings it to his mouth. The others do the same. Then their wings wither and their faces turn fromsilver to purple. They go out heavily thumping their clogs. They leave my heart on a chair like a little empty pot. It takes all day to fill it back up so that the next morning the angels don’t leave me silvery and winged.
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LITTLE TOWN
    By day there are fruits and sea, by night stars and sea. Di Fiori Street is a cone of cheery colors. Noon. The sun beats its white stick on the green shades. In a laurel grove, oxen sing an ode to shadows. At that moment I decided to declare my love. The sea holds its peace and the little town swells like the breasts of the girl selling figs.
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WALL
    We stand against the wall. Our youth has been taken from us like a condemned man’s shirt. We wait. Before the fat bullet lodges itself in our necks, ten or twenty years pass. The wall is high and strong. Behind the wall there are a tree and a star. The tree is lifting the wall with its roots. The star is nibbling the stone like a mouse. In a hundred, two hundred years there will be a little window.
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WAR
    A convoy of steel quiffs. Boys painted with chalk. Aluminum filings bring down houses. Deafening missiles are sent into completely crimson air. No one flies off into the sky. The earth attracts bodies and lead.
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THE WOLF AND THE LAMB
    Gotcha—said the wolf and yawned. The lamb turned its teary eyes to the wolf.—Do you have to eat me? Is that really necessary?
    â€”Sadly, I do. That’s how it goes in all fairy tales: Once upon a time a naughty little lamb strayed away from its mother. In the woods it met a big bad wolf who …
    â€”Excuse me, this is not the woods, just my owner’s yard. I didn’t stray away from my mother. I’m an orphan. My mother was also eaten by a wolf.
    â€”Never mind. After you die the authors of edifying literature will take care of you. They’ll work out the setting, the motives, and the moral. Don’t be hard on me. You have no idea how inane it is to be a bad wolf. If it hadn’t been for Aesop we would be sitting here on our hind legs watching the sunset. I get a kick out of that.
    Yes, dear children. The wolf ate the little lamb, then licked his lips. Don’t follow after the wolf, dear children. Don’t sacrifice yourselves for a moral.
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BALLAD OF OLD BACHELORS
    They shave with a razor. Afterward they scramble around endlessly for their cuff links under the chest of drawers. They tie their ties meticulously and smile at the mirror. Because now it’s soft silk, but at the time of their first loves it was a noose. Well, so what; time heals all wounds. You’ve been around, seen it all. A man cools down.
    The suspenders hang down behind. If they were children they’d chase those suspenders.—“Rachel, when he …”—that’s whenever they put on their vest. You can count on it.
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TOWER
    The tower is fifty ells down and the same up. There’s a man kept in the dungeon under the tower. The king has bound him to his conscience with a chain. After a wonderful life he is counting days, but not waiting.
    On the top of the tower there lives an astronomer. The king bought him a telescope to bind him to the universe. The astronomer counts thestars, but isn’t afraid. The man on top and the man down below fall asleep full of numbers.
    That’s