Two Poems by Zbigniew Herbert

PN Review 24, March - April 1982

Translated by Michael March and Jarosław Anders

MR COGITO - THE RETURN

1.
Mr Cogito
decided to return
to the stone womb
of his country

the decision is a dramatic one
he would bitterly reproach himself

yet, he can no longer bear
the colloquial expressions
-comment allez-vous
-wie geht's
-how are you

these apparently simple questions
demand a complex answer

Mr Cogito tears off
the bandages of kind indifference

he stopped believing in progress
he is absorbed in his own wound

affluent windows
tire him

he became attached only
to a Doric column
San Clemente Church
the portrait of a certain lady
a book he had no time to read
and some other trifles

so he returns

he sees
the border
the ploughed fields
the murderous guard-towers
the thick vegetation of barbed wire
the noiseless
armoured door
close slowly behind

and now
he is alone
in the treasury
of all misfortune

2.
so why does he return
friends from the better world
ask

he could stay here
settle down

entrust his wound
to chemical stain-removers

abandon it in the left-luggage
of fine airports

so why does he return

-to the water of childhood
-to the tangled roots
-to the grip of memory
-to the hand the face
burned on the grill of time

the apparently simple questions
demand a complex answer
perhaps Mr Cogito returns
to answer

the incitement of fear
impossible happiness
an unexpected blow
a lethal question

THRENODY

in memory of my mother

And now she has brown clouds of roots
             above her head
a slender lily of salt on her brow
             prayer beads of sand
and she floats on the bottom of a boat through
             the foaming nebulae
a mile remote where
             the river bends
visible-invisible as
             light on a wave
she is unchanged
             forsaken like us

---

Zbigniew Herbert (1924 – 1998) was a Polish poet, essayist, drama writer and moralist. He is one of the best known and most translated post-war Polish writers. He was born in Lwow in Poland, which became part of Soviet Ukraine and is now called Lviv. During war, Herbert joined the resistance movement against Nazi occupation. His poetry was shaped by his experiences of living under dictatorship, as well as incorporating elements of mythology, medieval heroes and works of art.

Jarosław Anders is a writer and translator specializing in Eastern European literature.

Michael March is a poet and translator. His translation of Barbarian in the Garden by Zbigniew Herbert was published by Carcanet in 1986.

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