The Collected Poems (12 page)

along a gravel path
hedged with box
the victor departs
wondering
whether out of Marsyas' howling
there will not some day arise
a new kind
of art—let us say—concrete

suddenly
at his feet
falls a petrified nightingale

he looks back
and sees
that the hair of the tree to which Marsyas was fastened
is white

completely

 

Hear us O Silver-bowed archer through the clutter of leaves and arrows through the stubborn silence of battle and the mighty call of the dead again autumn O Silver-bowed archer trees and people depart we sleep in sultry tents under a sky crumpled by curses we dip our faces in dust and wash our bodies in sweat from the breast opened by a sword not blood not blood escapes animals die the eyes of mules are sinking the sails of our ships are rotting and no storm near the bay we shall not return to our wives bitter girls of foreign countries will not leave us much time to weep in their arms not for the stone wreath of Troy do we implore You O Master not for a plume of fame white women and gold but restore if you can to blemished faces goodness and put simplicity into our hands just as you once put iron

send down white clouds Apollo white clouds white clouds

 

Thanks to energetic action taken by the government, firefighters and youth organizations, two thousand victims of Vesuvius have been rescued after twenty centuries. They are (it must be said at once) in good shape; their lives are now out of danger. Lovers turn their backs on aggressive journalists and angelic old ladies, chained dogs bark as if possessed, and a street urchin bestows on history the name of a certain strumpet.

 

Marked in the guidebook by two stars (in fact there are more) the whole principality—that is to say the city, the sea and a stretch of sky—looks great at first glance. The graves are whitewashed; the houses are detached; the flowers are plump.

All the citizens are guardians of landmarks. Owing to the low number of tourists, the work is not arduous—an hour in the morning and an hour at night.

In between, a siesta.

Over the principality a cloud of snores rises, red as a cauldron. Only the prince isn't sleeping. He's rocking the head of a local god to sleep.

The hotels and inns are occupied by angels, who took a liking to the principality for its hot baths, solemn customs, and air distilled by the motion of feathers buffing memory.

 

Through seven mountain frontiers
barbed wire of rivers
and executed forests
and hanged bridges
I kept coming—
through waterfalls of stairways
whirlings of sea wings
and baroque heaven
all bubbly with angels
—to you
Jerusalem in a frame

I stand
in the dense nettle patch
of a cook's tour
on a shore of crimson rope
and eyes

so I'm here
sometimes it was
sometimes it seemed that
don't even think about it

so I'm here
they were all going to come

I'm alone

when already
he could no longer move his head
he said
as soon as all this is over
I'm going to Paris
between the second and the third finger
of the right hand
a space
I put in this furrow
the empty shells of fates

so I'm here
it's me here
pressed into the floor
with living heels

fat and not too nice signora
loosens her hair upon dry rocks

hewed off from the meat of life
abducted from home and history

with horrifying ears of wax
smothered with a scarf of glaze

the empty volumes of her flesh
are set in diamonds

between the blackness of her back
and the first tree of my life

lies a sword
a melted precipice

 

she could no longer move her head
she nodded for me to bend over her
—here's two hundred zlotys
add the remainder
and have them say a Gregorian mass

she didn't want
grapes
she didn't want
morphine
she didn't want
to gladden the poor
she wanted a mass

so she got one

we kneel in the heat
in a numbered pew
my brother wipes his brow with a hankie
my sister fans herself with a prayer book
I repeat
as we forgive those
I forget how it goes
and start over again

the priest
walks the path
of seven lit lilies
the organ wails
seems it'll open
and air will flow

but no
everything is shut
wax runs down
a candle's stem
I am thinking
what do they do with the wax
do they use it for new candles
or throw it away

maybe
the priest
will do for us
what we cannot do
maybe he will rise up just a bit

a bell rings

and
with black torso
and silver wings
he climbs
up the first two rungs
and slides back down
like a fly

we kneel in the heat
in a numbered pew
bound to the earth
by a thread of sweat

it is over at last
we leave hastily
and right outside
follows a lofty act
of deep breathing

 

O my seven-stringed board
in you I dried and pressed my tears
my rebel's frozen fist and paper
on which one cold night I wrote down
my youthful comic testament

and now it's empty and cleaned out
I've sold the tears and the bunch of fists
in the market place they fetched a price
a little fame a penny or two
and now nothing scares off sleep
now not for me the lice and concrete

O drawer o lyre I have lost
and still so much that I could play
with fingers drumming your empty floor
and how good was a desperate heart
and how difficult to part
from nourishing pain which had no hope

I knock on you open forgive me
I could be silent no more I had
to sell the mark of my discontent
such is freedom one has afresh
to invent and to abolish gods
when Caesar wrestles with song at last

and now an empty seashell hums
about the seas which lapsed into sand
the storm congealed to a crystal of salt
before the drawer receives the body
such is my unwieldy prayer
to four boards of consciousness

 

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 hot”

our fear
does not rise on the wings of the tempest
does not sit on a church tower
it is down-to-earth

it has the shape
of a bundle made in haste
with warm clothing
provisions
and arms

our fear
does not have the face of a dead man
the dead are gentle to us
we carry them on our shoulders
sleep under the same blanket
dose their eyes
adjust their lips

pick a dry spot
and bury them

not too deep
not too shallow

 

The whole royal family was living in one room at that time. Outside the windows was a wall, and under the wall, a dump. There, rats used to bite cats to death. This was not seen. The windows had been painted over with lime.

When the executioners came, they found an everyday scene.

His Majesty was improving the regulations of the Holy Trinity regiment, the occultist Philippe was trying to soothe the Queen's nerves by suggestion, the Crown Prince, rolled into a ball, was sleeping in an armchair, and the Grand (and skinny) Duchesses were singing pious songs and mending linen.

As for the valet, he stood against a partition and tried to imitate the tapestry.

 

They just go on sitting on the spreading branches of trees. They move listlessly like dying birds. Sometimes only the sun setting ignites the matchless colors of their feathers.

Despite security, peasants shoot at them. Not for game, but to see blood of a different color.

When all those trees have withered together with their inhabitants, they should be delicately broken off near the ground and inserted in the pages of the herbarium called an armorial.

 

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 exploding thunderbolts. At the end only superstitious neurotics carried in their pockets little statues of salt, representing the god of irony. There was no greater god at that time.

Then came the barbarians. They too valued highly the little god of irony. They would crush it under their heels and add it to their dishes.

 

This autumn the trees have peace at last. They stand amid the solid, slightly contemptuous greenery, without a shade of yellow, without a grain of red in their leaves. The grass is thick, deeply rooted in the earth's skin, and it in no way reminds one of the fur of aging animals. Uncut roses revolve their warm planets around unmoving insects thin as moons.

Only the monuments feel this autumn is the more tragic for being the last. Decaying pedestals display the transience of the builders of empire. Angels' wings and admirals' crests are falling. The philosopher's cracked forehead reveals a terrifying void with burst blood vessels. Where the prophet's pointer finger used to be there now floats a little spider hooked to the Indian summer.

Gray-maned lovers walk under the eternal trees, along a path strewn with the brittle fingers of gods and emperors.

 

Jonah son of Amittai
running away from a dangerous mission
boarded a ship sailing
from Joppa to Tarshish

the well-known things happened
great wind tempest
the crew casts Jonah forth into the deep
the sea ceases from her raging
the foreseen fish comes swimming up
three days and three nights
Jonah prays in the fish's belly
which vomits him out at last
on dry land

the modern Jonah
goes down like a stone
if he comes across a whale
he hasn't time even to gasp

saved
he behaves more cleverly
than his biblical colleague
the second time he does not take on
a dangerous mission
he grows a beard
and far from the sea
far from Nineveh
under an assumed name
deals in cattle and antiques

agents of Leviathan
can be bought
they have no sense of fate
they are the functionaries of chance
in a neat hospital
Jonah dies of cancer
himself not knowing very well
who he really was

the parable
applied to his head
expires
and the balm of the legend
does not take to his flesh

 

I've decided to return to the emperor's court
once more I shall see if it's possible to live there
I could stay here in this remote province
under the full sweet leaves of the sycamore
and the gentle rule of sickly nepotists

when I return I don't intend to commend myself
I shall applaud in measured portions
smile in ounces frown discreetly
for that they will not give me a golden chain
this iron one will suffice

I've decided to return tomorrow or the day after
I cannot live among vineyards nothing here is mine
trees have no roots houses no foundations the rain is glassy flowers smell of wax
a dry cloud rattles against the empty sky
so I shall return tomorrow or the day after in any case I shall return

I must come to terms with my face again
with my lower lip so it knows how to curb its scorn
with my eyes so they remain ideally empty
and with that miserable chin the hare of my face
which trembles when the chief of guards walks in

of one thing I am sure I will not drink wine with him
when he brings his goblet nearer I will lower my eyes
and pretend I'm picking bits of food from between my teeth
besides the emperor likes courage of convictions
to a certain extent to a certain reasonable extent
he is after all a man like everyone else
and already tired by all those tricks with poison
he cannot drink his fill incessant chess
this left cup is for Drusus from the right one pretend to sip
then drink only water never lose sight of Tacitus
go out into the garden and come back when they've taken away the corpse

I've decided to return to the emperor's court
yes I hope that things will work out somehow

 

Now that we're alone we can talk prince man to man
though you lie on the stairs and see no more than a dead ant
nothing but black sun with broken rays
I could never think of your hands without smiling
and now that they lie on the stone like fallen nests
they are as defenseless as before The end is exactly this
The hands lie apart The sword lies apart The head apart
and the knight's feet in soft slippers

You will have a soldier's funeral without having been a soldier
the only ritual I am acquainted with a little
There will be no candles no singing only cannon-fuses and bursts
crepe dragged on the pavement helmets boots artillery horses drums drums I know nothing exquisite
those will be my manoeuvres before I start to rule
one has to take the city by the neck and shake it a bit