Ryszard Krynicki

TO RYSZARD KRYNICKI - A LETTER 

Not much will remain Ryszard in truth not much of the poetry of our mad century Rilke Eliot sure a few other worthy shamans who knew the secret of word spells time-resistant forms without which no phrase deserves memory and speech is like sand 

our school notebooks subjected to earnest torture with their traces of sweat tears and blood will be to the eternal proofreader a song without a score nobly righteous and all too self-evident 

we came too easily to believe beauty does not save that it leads wantons from dream to dream to death none of us was able to wake the dryad of a poplar or to decipher the handwriting of the clouds that is why no unicorn will stray across our tracks we'll raise up no ship in the bay no peacock no rose nakedness was left to us and we stand here naked on the right the better side of the triptych The Last Judgment 

we took public affairs onto our lanky shoulders the battle with tyranny lies the recording of pain but our foes-you admit-were despicably small and so was it worth it to bring down holy speech to rostrum gibberish to a newpaper's black foam 

so little joy-sister of the gods-in our poems Ryszard too few glimmering twilights mirrors wreaths ecstasies nothing just obscure psalmodies the whine of animulae urns of ash in a burned-out garden 

what forces do we need-in spite of destiny the decrees of history and human iniquity-to whisper a good night in treason's garden what forces of the spirit do we need blindly beating despair against despair to ignite a spark a word of atonement that the dancing circle might last on the soft grass that a child's birth and every beginning be blessed the gifts of the air of the earth of fire and of water 

I don't know-my friend-and that's why

I send you these owl's riddles in the night

a warm embrace

a bow from my shadow

Zbigniew Herbert: The Collected Poems 1956-1998

Our Life Grows 

For Krystynka and Natalia

An unknown spy will send him a challenge

A perjured court will do battle with him

- ADAM MICKIEWICZ

"Do Matki Polki" (To a Polish Mother) 

I rebelled

but I think this bloody knot

should be the very last one

a man freeing himself

should tear loose

- ZBIGNIEW HERBERT

"Reflections on the Problem of the Nation"

You survived not so that you might live

you have little time you must give testimony

-ZBIGNIEW HERBERT

"The Envoy of Mr. Cogito"

and in that weeping

(here is always

so much life

- STANISLAW BARANCZAK

"The Day After Tomorrow"

This, Nothing

Or, Other Poems jar Internal Use 

If it is true that the same suffering is harder to endure for noble

reasons than for base ones (people who have stood motionless

in a queue from one o'clock at night to eight in the morning to

obtain an egg would have had great difficulty doing the same to

save a human life), it may be that virtue of a base kind is more

resistant to adversity, temptation and misfortune than virtue

of a noble kind.

• • •

We know from experience that the truth is always universal

and reality is always particular, and yet they are inseparable

and even form a whole. We can find no way out of this problem.

-SIMONE WElL