IBIGNIEW HERBERT
Life of a Warrior
He stood at the threshold of the room where his dead father was
lying, wrapped like a silkworm in a silence of wax-and shouted. That's
how it began.
He clung to the roar and climbed on it, higher and higher, for he
knew silence means death. Rhythm of hobnailed boots, hoofbeats on a
bridge-a hussar's sky-blue leggings. The thunder of drums as musketeers
march into a cloud of smoke-silver sword of an officer. Roar from a
cannon, the earth groaning like a drum-the triangular shako of a field–
marshall.
And so when he died, his faithful soldiers wanted him to ascend
heaven by the ladder of tumult. A hundred bell-towers rocked the town.
At the moment when it swung closest to the sky, the gunners fired. But
they could not spli t off enough of the blue glaze to slip in the field–
marshall, complete with his sword and triangular shako.
Now he comes loose again, and falls on the face of the earth. His
faithful soldiers pick him up, and once again fire at the sky.
Chinese Wallpaper
A deserted island with the sugary head of a volcano. In the middle
of smooth water, reeds, and a fisherman with a pole. Higher, an island
spread out like an apple tree with a pagoda and small bridge, where lovers
meet under the blossoming moon.
If that was all, it would be a nice episode-a history of the world
in a few words. But it is repeated into infinity with stubborn exactitude:
volcano, lovers, the moon.
One cannot make a greater insult to the world.
Translated from the Polish
by
John and Bogdana Carpenter
