Zbigniew Herbert

Today'll be light on ruminations and heavy on good poetry. On the slate for today is Zbigniew Herbert, a 20th-century Polish poet. First, a few strange and lovely prose poems of his:
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Heart

All man's internal organs are bald and smooth. The stomach, intestines,
lungs, are bald. Only the heart has hair--reddish, thick, sometimes quite
long. This is a problem. The heart's hair inhibits the flow of blood like
water plants. The hair is often infested with worms. You have to love very
deeply to pick these quick little parasites from your beloved's cardiac hair.

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A Devil

He is an utter failure as a devil. Even his tail. Not long and fleshy with
a black brush of hair at the end, but short, fluffy, and sticking out comically
like a rabbit's. His skin is pink, only under his left shoulder-blade a mark the
size of a gold ducat. But his horns are the worst. They don't grow outward
like other devils' but inward, into the brain. That's why he suffers so often
from headaches.
He is sad. He sleeps for days on end. Neither good nor evil attract him.
When he walks down the street, you see distinctly the motion of the rosy
wings of his lungs.

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Hermes, Dog and Star

Hermes is going along in the world. He meets a dog.
--I'm a god--Hermes introduces himself politely.
The dog sniffs his feet.
--I feel lonely. People betray the gods. But mortal animals without self-
consciousness, that's what we want. In the evening after traveling all day
we'll sit down under an oak. Then I'll tell you I feel old and want to die. It'll
be a lie necessary to get you to lick my hands.
--Sure--the dog replies casually--I'll lick your hands. They're cold and
they smell strange.
They go along and after a while they meet a star.
--I'm Hermes--the god says--and produces one of his most handsome
faces. --Would you by any chance feel like coming with us to the end of the
world? I'll try to work it so that it's scary there and you have to lean your
head on my arm.
--OK--says the star in a glassy voice. I don't care where I go. But your
saying the end of the world is pure naivete. Sadly, there is no end of the
world.
They go along. The dog, Hermes, and the star. Holding hands. Hermes
thinks to himself: the next time he goes out looking for friends, he won't
be so sincere.
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Elephant

In truth, elephants are extremely sensitive and high-strung. They have
a wild imagination which allows them sometimes to forget about their
appearance. When they go into the water, they close their eyes. At the sight
of their own legs they weep with frustration.
I knew an elephant who fell in love with a hummingbird. He lost
weight, got no sleep, and in the end died of a broken heart. Those ignorant
of the elephant's nature said: he was so overweight.

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Fish

The sleep of fish is beyond imagination. Even in the darkest corner of
a pond, among the reeds, their rest is a waking: they hold the same position
for an eternity; and it is absolutely impossible to say of them: their heads
hit the pillow.
Their tears too are like a cry in the wilderness--numberless.
Fish can't express their despair with a gesture. This justifies the blunt
knife that skips along their spine ripping the sequins of scales.

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(NB: I can't figure out how to make indentations. Does anyone know how to do it?) Herbert also wrote a long series of poems centered around a recurring character named Mr. Cogito. Here's my favorite of those:
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Mr Cogito and a Poet of a Certain Age

1
A poet past his prime
an odd phenomenon

2
he looks in the mirror
he smashes the mirror

3
on a moonless night
he drowns his birth certificate in a black pond

4
he spies on the young
imitates the way they rock their hips

5
he chairs a meeting
of independent Trotskyites
incites them to arson

6
he writes letters
to the President of the Solar System
full of intimate confessions

7
a poet of a certain age
in the middle of an uncertain age

8
instead of cultivating
pansies and onomatopoeias
he sows spiky exclamations
invectives and treatises

9
he reads Isaiah and Das Kapital by turns
then in the frenzy of discussion
gets his quotes mixed up

10
a poet in the nebulous season
between the departure of Eros
and a Thanatos not yet risen from stone

11
he smokes hash
but doesn't see
either infinity
or flowers
or waterfalls
he sees a procession
of hooded monks
climbing a rocky mountain
carrying burned-out torches

12
the poet of a certain age
recalls warm chidhood
a wild youth
a disreputable manhood

13
he plays
at Freud
he plays
at hope
he plays
at red and black
he plays
at flesh
and blood
he plays and loses
is seized with false mirth

14
only now does he understand his father
he cannot forgive his sister
who eloped with an actor
he envies his younger brother
and bent over a picture of his mother
he tries once more
to persuade her to conceive

15
dreams
trivial pubertal
the catechism priest
protruding objects
and the unattainable Jadzia

16
at dawn he examines
his hand
astonished by skin
that looks like bark

17
against the fresh blue sky
the white tree of his veins
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