Two Stanzas
I. AUGUST
Womenfolk leaning on rakes like Pallases on spears
Grow huge in the shadows sent them from the sky’s torn
overcast ceiling; fiddles silent as lutes
Beyond bridge and echo—laughter of distant metaphors
To those departing in shadows drawn out by the sunset
The harvesters bring a lost report of us
Who were startled at Pompeii—cut in silence like amber
We faint with the utmost hush in the assonance of dusk
II. SEA
When you rush up to me as noise and vision
And grow in my eyes as the simplest figurative wave
The string snaps like a shoreline and I don’t know
If I’ll conquer you with the oar of ancient measures
Odysseus found a twig from Ithaca
And bids the horizons farewell—dead landscapes
Finished epics. A commotion and constant noise
A poem flares on the breath—rose bouquet of winds
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“Two Stanzas” from Reconstruction of the Poet by Zbigniew Herbert. 2024 © by the Estate of Zbigniew Herbert. Courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers.
Zbigniew Herbert
Zbigniew Herbert was born in Lwów, Poland, in 1924. Herbert studied law, economics, and philosophy at the universities of Krakow, Torun, and Warsaw. His books include Selected Poems, Mr Cogito, Report from the Besieged City and Other Poems, Barbarian in the Garden, Still Life with a Bridle, The King of the Ants, and Reconstruction of the Poet. A passionate traveler, in the years of Solidarity he also became a central authority of the political opposition to communism in Poland. He died in 1998.
