Zbigniew Herbert, 'Episode in a Library'
Feb. 27th, 2014 01:00 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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war_poetryEpisode in a Library
A blonde girl is bent over a poem. With a pencil sharp as a lancet she transfers the words to a blank page and changes them into strokes, accents, caesuras. The lament of a fallen poet now looks like a salamander eaten away by ants.
When we carried him away under machine-gun fire, I believed that his still warm body would be resurrected in the word. Now as I watch the death of the words, I know there is no limit to decay. All that will be left after us in the black earth will be scattered syllables. Accents over nothingness and dust.
by Zbigniew Herbert
Translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Peter Dale Scott
A blonde girl is bent over a poem. With a pencil sharp as a lancet she transfers the words to a blank page and changes them into strokes, accents, caesuras. The lament of a fallen poet now looks like a salamander eaten away by ants.
When we carried him away under machine-gun fire, I believed that his still warm body would be resurrected in the word. Now as I watch the death of the words, I know there is no limit to decay. All that will be left after us in the black earth will be scattered syllables. Accents over nothingness and dust.
by Zbigniew Herbert
Translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Peter Dale Scott
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