These two fine poems by the post-war Polish poets Zbigniew Herbert and Tadeusz Rozewicz are not the easiest to find on-line.  So I created this quick post of these two poems to accompany my interview with David St. John on the Huffington Post.  Visit the Huffington Post and then click back here for the second half of my interview with DSJ.  I’m especially happy to have spoken with David as he’s been my teacher and a great support for over six years now.

In the interview on the HuffPost, David talked about reading these two poems immediately after 9/11.  Poland was hit hard by WWII and the art, especially the poetry that was created following the war demonstrates a terrific resilience and deep desire to find order and meaning.  Both of the poems below are good examples of that human impulse.  The translations were done by Czeslaw Milosz.

By Zbigniew Herbert

At the Gate of the Valley

After the rain of stars
on the meadow of ashes
they all have gathered under the guard of angels

from a hill that survived
the eye embraces
the whole lowing two-legged herd

in truth they are not many
counting even those who will come
from chronicles fables and the lives of the saints

but enough of these remarks
let us lift our eyes
to the throat of the valley
from which comes a shout

after a loud whisper of explosion
after a loud whisper of silence
this voice resounds like a spring of living water

it is we are told
a cry of mothers from whom children are taken
since as it turns out
we shall be saved each one alone

the guardian angels are unmoved
and let us grant they have a hard job

she begs
- hide me in your eye
in the palm of your hand in your arms
we have always been together
you can’t abandon me
now when I am dead and need tenderness

a higher ranking angel
with a smile explains the misunderstanding

an old woman carries
the corpse of a canary
(all the animals died a little earlier)
he was so nice – she says weeping -
he understood everything
and when I said to him
her voice is lost in the general noise

even a lumberjack
whom one would never suspect of such things
an old bowed fellow
catches to his breast an axe
- all my life she was mine
she will be mine here too
she nourished me there
she will nourish me here
nobody has the right
- he says -
I won’t give her up

those who as it seems
have obeyed the orders without pain
go lowering their heads as a sign of consent
but in their clenched fists they hide
fragments of letters ribbons clippings of hair
and photographs
which they naively think
won’t be taken from them

so they appear
a moment before
the final division
of those gnashing their teeth
from those singing psalms

By Tadeusz Rozewicz

IN the middle of life

After the end of the world
after my death
I found myself in the middle of life
I created myself
constructed life
people animals landscapes

this is the table I was saying
this is the table
on the table are lying the bread the knife
the knife serves to cut the bread
people nourish themselves with bread

the man talked to the water
talked to the moon
to the flowers to the rain
he talked to the earth
to the birds
to the sky

the sky was silent
the earth was silent
if he heard a voice
which flowed
from the earth from the water from the sky
it was the voice of another man