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You spoil everything

Favorite books of 2007, second installment: from Zbigniew Herbert, The Collected Poems 1956-1998, translated by Alissa Valles:

Tenderness

In the end what can I do with you — tenderness
tenderness for birds and for people for a stone
you should sleep in a palm in the eye’s depths
that’s your place may you be woken by no one

You spoil everything you get it back to front
you contract a tragedy into a pocket romance
you change the high-toned flight of a thought
into sobbing and exclamations into moaning

To describe is to murder because it’s your role
to sit in the darkness of a cold and empty hall
to sit solitary where reason blithely rattles on
with mist in a marble eye tears running down

Apparently there is an online chat on Herbert this week at the website Words Without Borders, hosted by James Marcus and Cynthia Haven and featuring several worthy guests including translator Valles.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 6th, 2008 at 1:48 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “You spoil everything”

  1. Chris
    January 6th, 2008 19:16
    1

    There is a great old paperback of post-war polish poets in english translation edited by milosz. you need this if you dont have it!

  2. Sam
    January 6th, 2008 19:58
    2

    Thanks much, Chris – I think I found it.

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