The Collected Poems by Zbigniew Herbert Page B

blackness of her back
and the first tree of my life
    lies a sword
a melted precipice
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LAST REQUEST
    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
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DRAWER
    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
    Â 
OUR FEAR
    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
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THE END OF A DYNASTY
    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.
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THEY SIT IN TREES
    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