Sunday's poems: Zbigniew Herbert

"Let us detach ourselves a little from this truly horrible everyday reality and try to write about doubt, anxiety, and despair"

Zbigniew Herbert

"It is vanity to think that one can influence the course of history by writing poetry. It is not the barometer that changes the weather.
"Zbigniew Herbert

"This poetry is about the pain of the twentieth century, about accepting the cruelty of an inhuman age, about an extraordinary sense of reality. And the fact that at the same time the poet loses none of his lyricism or his sense of humor - this is the unfathomable secret of a great artist." 

Adam Zagajewski

Zbigniew Herbert (1924-1998) is one of Poland's most influential and celebrated poets. 

During WW2 he fought in the Polish resistance against the Nazis and in post war Poland he opposed Communist ideology, a risky position for a poet and citizen. During the 60's and 70's he refused to submit his poetry to the Communist Government, with the result that his work was not published till the 1980's and then in underground publications.

From Mr Cogito on a Set Topic: "Friends Depart"

with the inexorable
passing of years
his count of friends
shrank

they went off
in pairs
in groups
one by one

some paled like wafers
lost earthly dimensions
and suddenly

or gradually
emigrated
to the sky

I Would Like to Describe
Zbigniew Herbert

I would like to describe the simplest emotion
joy or sadness
but not as others do
reaching for shafts of rain or sun 

I would like to describe a light
which is being born in me
but I know it does not resemble
any star
for it is not so bright
not so pure
and is uncertain

I would like to describe courage
without dragging behind me a dusty lion
and also anxiety
without shaking a glass full of water

to put it another way
I would give all metaphors
in return for one word
drawn out of my breast like a rib

for one word
contained within the boundaries
of my skin

but apparently this is not possible

and just to say -- I love
I run around like mad
picking up handfuls of birds
and my tenderness
which after all is not made of water
asks the water for a face
and anger 

different from fire

borrows from it
a loquacious tongue

so is blurred
so is blurred
in me
what white-haired gentlemen
separated once and for all
and said
this is the subject
and this is the object 

we fall asleep 

with one hand under our head
and with the other in a mound of planets
our feet abandon us

and taste the earth
with their tiny roots
which next morning
we tear out painfully

From "Selected Poems of Zbigniew Herbert";

The earthquake in Japan and the arithmetic of compassion

This evening I have been watching footage from Japan and thinking of the terrible loss of life and destruction. Predictions of tens of thousands dead and missing. Now a nuclear catastrophe. 

I am deeply affected by the unfolding events. My step daughter lived in and around Sendai  and talking to her today via Face book (she is in the Caribbean) she tells me she is profoundly worried about friends still there. I cannot stop thinking about the terrible tragedy facing the people of Japan.

And  now a country that suffered the horrific destruction inflicted by the nuclear age faces the serious possibility of another nuclear catastrophe. This is apocalyptic. I fear this a forerunner of the future- humankind and human civilization overwhelmed by the forces of nature and the earth. 

The Polish Poet Zbigniew Herbert urges us to meditate on the "arithmetic of compassion". I feel the need to do that tonight.  

 The extract below is from a piece  I wrote that first appeared on this blog September 2009 and was influenced by the poetry of the great Polish Poet Zbigniew Herbert.

I have been thinking a lot lately about what I call radical compassion which is a way of seeing the world and seeing events and experiences from someone else's perspective, with a perspective that encompasses their views of the situation, past, present and future. Radical compassion is not feigned or manufactured and must involve the imperative to act, to take action for social change, in the face of injustice and suffering.
But most people, particularly in this country, want to avoid thinking about social injustice, suffering and evil. The Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert is not one of those people. I read a reviewer once who described his poems as a continuous alchemy of despair and desolation. Herbert is a poet with a powerful sense of right and wrong.
The line from Zbigniew Herbert's poem Mr Cogito Reads the Newspaper is:

A subject for meditation:
the arithmetic of compassion

here is the full poem from the Zbigniew Herbert The Collected Poems 1956-1998

Mr. Cogito Reads the Newspaper
By Zbigniew Herbert


On the first page
a report of the killing of 120 soldiers
the war lasted a long time
you could get used to it


close alongside
the news of a sensational crime
with a portrait of the murderer


the eye of Mr Cogito
slips indifferently
over the soldiers’ hecatomb
to plunge with delight
into the description of everyday horror


a thirty-year-old farm labourer
under the stress of nervous depression
killed his wife
and two small children


it is described with precision
the course of the murder
the position of the bodies
and other details


for 120 dead
you search on a map in vain
too great a distance
covers them like a jungle


they don’t speak to the imagination
there are too many of them
the numeral zero at the end
changes them into an abstraction


a subject for meditation:
the arithmetic of compassion

the poetry of social injustice

I have been thinking a lot lately about what I call radical compassion which is a way of seeing the world and seeing events and experiences from someone else's perspective, with a perspective that encompasses their views of the situation, past, present and future. Radical compassion is not feigned or manufactured and must involve the imperative to act, to take action for social change, in the face of injustice and suffering.

But most people, particularly in this country, want to avoid thinking about social injustice, suffering and evil. The Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert is not one of those people. I read a reviewer once who described his poems as a continuous alchemy of despair and desolation. Herbert is a poet with a powerful sense of right and wrong.

Just love the line from Zbigniew Herbert's poem Mr Cogito Reads the Newspaper:

A subjest for meditation:
the arithmetic of compassion

here is the full poem from the Zbigniew Herbert The Collected Poems 1956-1998

Mr. Cogito Reads the Newspaper
By Zbigniew Herbert

On the first page
a report of the killing of 120 soldiers
the war lasted a long time
you could get used to it

close alongside
the news of a sensational crime
with a portrait of the murderer

the eye of Mr Cogito
slips indifferently
over the soldiers’ hecatomb
to plunge with delight
into the description of everyday horror

a thirty-year-old farm labourer
under the stress of nervous depression
killed his wife
and two small children

it is described with precision
the course of the murder
the position of the bodies
and other details

for 120 dead
you search on a map in vain
too great a distance
covers them like a jungle

they don’t speak to the imagination
there are too many of them
the numeral zero at the end
changes them into an abstraction

a subject for meditation:
the arithmetic of compassion