Ulubione wiersze Pana Bonobo

Rozumie mój, prózno sie masz frasować:

Co zginęło, trudno tego wetować;

Póki czas był, póki szczęście służyło,

Czegoś żądał, o wszystko łacno było.

Teraz widzisz, że nam niebo nie sprzyja:

W czym sie kochasz, to cię daleko mija.

Cóż temu rzec? I szkoda głowy psować;

Lepiej sie nam na lepsze czasy chować.

A nie mniemaj, byś sam był w tej niewoli:

Nalazłby sie, kogo to nie mniej boli;

Jeno ludzie snadniej zakryć umieją,

Acz nie z serca, z wierzchu sie przedsię śmieją.

Mnie, smutnego, ten dowcip nie ratuje,

Wyda mię twarz, gdy sie serce źle czuje.

Wszakoż widzę, że sie prózno frasować:

Co zginęło, trudno tego wetować.

Pokój — szczęśliwość; ale bojowanie

Byt nasz podniebny: on srogi ciemności

Hetman i świata łakome marności

O nasze pilno czynią zepsowanie. 

Nie dosyć na tym, o nasz możny Panie!

Ten nasz dom — ciało —, dla zbiegłych lubości 

Niebacznie zajźrząc duchowi zwierzchności,

Upaść na wieki żądać nie przestanie. 

Cóż będę czynił w tak straszliwym boju,

Wątły, niebaczny, rozdwojony w sobie? 

Królu powszechny, prawdziwy pokoju

Zbawienia mego, jest nadzieja w tobie!

Ty mnie przy sobie postaw, a prześpiecznie 

Będę wojował i wygram statecznie! 

As virtuous men pass mildly away,

   And whisper to their souls to go,

Whilst some of their sad friends do say

   The breath goes now, and some say, No:

So let us melt, and make no noise,

   No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;

'Twere profanation of our joys

   To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears,

   Men reckon what it did, and meant;

But trepidation of the spheres,

   Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love

   (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit

Absence, because it doth remove

   Those things which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,

   That our selves know not what it is,

Inter-assured of the mind,

   Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,

   Though I must go, endure not yet

A breach, but an expansion,

   Like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so

   As stiff twin compasses are two;

Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show

   To move, but doth, if the other do.

And though it in the center sit,

   Yet when the other far doth roam,

It leans and hearkens after it,

   And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,

   Like th' other foot, obliquely run;

Thy firmness makes my circle just,

   And makes me end where I begun.

To what purpose, April, do you return again?

Beauty is not enough.

You can no longer quiet me with the redness

Of little leaves opening stickily.

I know what I know.

The sun is hot on my neck as I observe

The spikes of the crocus.

The smell of the earth is good.

It is apparent that there is no death.

But what does that signify?

Not only under ground are the brains of men

Eaten by maggots.

Life in itself

Is nothing,

An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.

It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,

April

Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was

Spawning snow and pink roses against it

Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:

World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,

Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion

A tangerine and spit the pips and feel

The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world

Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes— 

On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one's hands—

There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

If it form the one landscape that we, the inconstant ones,

    Are consistently homesick for, this is chiefly

Because it dissolves in water. Mark these rounded slopes

    With their surface fragrance of thyme and, beneath,

A secret system of caves and conduits; hear the springs

    That spurt out everywhere with a chuckle,

Each filling a private pool for its fish and carving

    Its own little ravine whose cliffs entertain

The butterfly and the lizard; examine this region

    Of short distances and definite places:

What could be more like Mother or a fitter background

    For her son, the flirtatious male who lounges

Against a rock in the sunlight, never doubting

    That for all his faults he is loved; whose works are but

Extensions of his power to charm? From weathered outcrop

    To hill-top temple, from appearing waters to

Conspicuous fountains, from a wild to a formal vineyard,

    Are ingenious but short steps that a child's wish

To receive more attention than his brothers, whether

    By pleasing or teasing, can easily take.

Watch, then, the band of rivals as they climb up and down

    Their steep stone gennels in twos and threes, at times

Arm in arm, but never, thank God, in step; or engaged

    On the shady side of a square at midday in

Voluble discourse, knowing each other too well to think

    There are any important secrets, unable

To conceive a god whose temper-tantrums are moral

    And not to be pacified by a clever line

Or a good lay: for accustomed to a stone that responds,

    They have never had to veil their faces in awe

Of a crater whose blazing fury could not be fixed;

    Adjusted to the local needs of valleys

Where everything can be touched or reached by walking,

    Their eyes have never looked into infinite space

Through the lattice-work of a nomad's comb; born lucky,

    Their legs have never encountered the fungi

And insects of the jungle, the monstrous forms and lives

    With which we have nothing, we like to hope, in common.

So, when one of them goes to the bad, the way his mind works

    Remains incomprehensible: to become a pimp

Or deal in fake jewellery or ruin a fine tenor voice

    For effects that bring down the house, could happen to all

But the best and the worst of us…

                                            That is why, I suppose,

    The best and worst never stayed here long but sought

Immoderate soils where the beauty was not so external,

    The light less public and the meaning of life

Something more than a mad camp. 'Come!' cried the granite wastes,

    "How evasive is your humour, how accidental

Your kindest kiss, how permanent is death." (Saints-to-be

    Slipped away sighing.) "Come!" purred the clays and gravels,

"On our plains there is room for armies to drill; rivers

    Wait to be tamed and slaves to construct you a tomb

In the grand manner: soft as the earth is mankind and both

    Need to be altered." (Intendant Caesars rose and

Left, slamming the door.) But the really reckless were fetched

    By an older colder voice, the oceanic whisper:

"I am the solitude that asks and promises nothing;

    That is how I shall set you free. There is no love;

There are only the various envies, all of them sad."

    They were right, my dear, all those voices were right

And still are; this land is not the sweet home that it looks,

    Nor its peace the historical calm of a site

Where something was settled once and for all: A back ward

    And dilapidated province, connected

To the big busy world by a tunnel, with a certain

    Seedy appeal, is that all it is now? Not quite:

It has a worldy duty which in spite of itself

    It does not neglect, but calls into question

All the Great Powers assume; it disturbs our rights. The poet,

    Admired for his earnest habit of calling

The sun the sun, his mind Puzzle, is made uneasy

    By these marble statues which so obviously doubt

His antimythological myth; and these gamins,

    Pursuing the scientist down the tiled colonnade

With such lively offers, rebuke his concern for Nature's

    Remotest aspects: I, too, am reproached, for what

And how much you know. Not to lose time, not to get caught,

    Not to be left behind, not, please! to resemble

The beasts who repeat themselves, or a thing like water

    Or stone whose conduct can be predicted, these

Are our common prayer, whose greatest comfort is music

    Which can be made anywhere, is invisible,

And does not smell. In so far as we have to look forward

    To death as a fact, no doubt we are right: But if

Sins can be forgiven, if bodies rise from the dead,

    These modifications of matter into

Innocent athletes and gesticulating fountains,

    Made solely for pleasure, make a further point:

The blessed will not care what angle they are regarded from,

    Having nothing to hide. Dear, I know nothing of

Either, but when I try to imagine a faultless love

    Or the life to come, what I hear is the murmur

Of underground streams, what I see is a limestone landscape.

                                            May 1948

Nobody heard him, the dead man,   

But still he lay moaning:

I was much further out than you thought   

And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking

And now he’s dead

It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,   

They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always   

(Still the dead one lay moaning)   

I was much too far out all my life   

And not waving but drowning.

Won­na mię­ta nad wodą pach­nia­ła,

Ko­ły­sa­ły się kęp­ki si­to­wia,

Brzask ró­żo­wiał i woda wia­ła,

Wiew si­to­wie i mię­tę owiał.

Nie wie­dzia­łem wte­dy, że te zio­ła

Będą w wier­szach sło­wa­mi po la­tach

I że kwia­ty z da­le­ka po imie­niu przy­wo­łam

Za­miast le­żeć zwy­czaj­nie nad wodą na kwia­tach.

Nie wie­dzia­łem, że się będę tak mę­czył,

Słów szu­ka­jąc dla ży­we­go świa­ta,

Nie wie­dzia­łem, że gdy się tak nad wodą klę­czy,

To po­tem trze­ba cier­pieć dłu­gie lata.

Wie­dzia­łem tyl­ko, że w si­to­wiu

Są pręż­ne wiot­kie i dłu­gie włó­kien­ka,

Że z nich splo­tę siat­kę le­ciut­ką i cien­ką,

Któ­rą nic nie będę ło­wił.

Boże do­bry mo­ich lat chło­pię­cych,

Mo­ich ja­snych świ­tów Boże świę­ty!

Czy już w ży­ciu nie bę­dzie wię­cej

Pach­ną­cej nad sta­wem mię­ty?

Czy to już tak za­wsze ze wszyst­kie­go

Będę sło­wa wy­ry­wał w roz­pa­czy,

I si­to­wia, si­to­wia zwy­czaj­ne­go

Ni­g­dy już zwy­czaj­nie nie zo­ba­czę?

Pamięci Konstantego Puzyny

Czas na mnie

czas nagli

co ze sobą zabrać

na tamten brzeg

nic

więc to już

wszystko

mamo

tak synku

to już wszystko

a więc to tylko tyle

tylko tyle

więc to jest całe życie

tak całe życie

czcicielom umarłych religii

Kapłan którego bóstwo

zstąpiło na ziemię

w rozwalonej świątyni

ludzką ukazało twarz

bezsilny kapłan

który podnosząc ręce

wie że z tego ani deszcz ani szarańcza

ani urodzaj ani gromobicie

    - powtarzam zetlały werset

    a tą samą inkantacją

    zachwytu

    szyję rosnącą do męczeństwa

    uderza płaska dłoń naśmiewcy

    mój święty taniec przed ołtarzem

    widzi tylko cień

    z gestami ulicznika

- a jednak

podnoszę oczy i ręce

podnoszę śpiew

i wiem że dym ofiarny

dążący w zimne niebo

zaplata warkocz bóstwu

bez głowy

The rear half had been run over,

leaving the head and thorax

and the front legs of the hedgehog shape.

A scream from a cramped-open

jaw. The scream of the mute is

more horrible than the silence after a flood,

when even black swans float

belly upwards.

And even if some hedgehog doctor were

to be found in a hollow trunk or under the leaves

in a beechwood there'd be no hope

for that mere half on Road E12.

In the name of logic,

in the name of the theory of pain,

in the name of the hedgehog god the father, the son

and the holy ghost amen,

in the name of games and unripe raspberries,

in the name of tumbling streams of love

ever different and ever bloody,

in the name of the roots which over-grow

the heads of aborted foetuses,

in the name of satanic beauty,

in the name of skin bearing human likeness,

in the name of all halves

and double helices, or purines

and pyrimidines

we tried to run over

the hedgehog's head with the front wheel.

And it was like guiding a lunar module

from a planetary distance,

from a control centre seized

by a cataleptic sleep.

And the mission failed. I got out

and found a heavy piece of brick.

Half the hedgehog continued screaming. And now

the scream turned into speech,

prepared by

the vaults of our tombs:

Then death will come and it will have your eyes.

Zimą nad sercem zmalałym nie panuj,

Podaj mi palce — po cichu — na palcach

Pójdziemy ścieżką śniegiem obsypaną

Na małą stację, z której się nie wraca.

W małej kolejce będziesz w szybkie krążki

Oddechem karmić — i wyrosną drzewa,

Las, w którym rządzą srebrzyste zajączki,

Dom z wielkim piecem, który ładnie śpiewa.

W domku dróżnika zamieszkamy. Dwoje

Pod jedną, biedną pierzyną powszednią.

Pantofle twoje i marzenia twoje,

Białe pasjanse z czułą przepowiednią.

Zmęczonym oczom światło karbidowe,

Zmęczonym ustom herbaty lipowe,

Zmęczonym nogom połacie domowe,

Szal na migrenę, kompresy na głowę.

I będzie stygła wielka misa czasu,

I będę pisał wiersze beznamiętne

O tym, że wyszłaś po drzewo do lasu

I że mnie czekasz za siódmym zakrętem.

Lecz nagle błyśnie jak piorun na torze

Nieubłagany nasz pociąg pospieszny,

Światłem obrzuci nasze czułe łoże

I dom nasz śmieszny, i zaułek leśny.

Nadzy, czerwoni wybiegniemy z domu,

Na białym śniegu dwa żałosne cienie...

Zimą nad sercem serdecznie się pomódl

O wieczne trwanie przez wieczne zmęczenie.