Chekhov's Mistress
National Slowetry Month: Zbigniew Herbert on Time
Zbigniew Herbert’s The Collected Poems 1956 – 1998† was just published but it’s already one of my most treasured books. Herbert has that quality shared by great poets of carrying profundity as naturally as a woman carries her infant child. I found this little gem to fit in nicely for National Slowetry Month as it captures inertia (in both of its seemingly opposite meanings) very well.
If you like this poem even the least little bit, check out the rest at HarperCollins’ “Browse Inside“ feature.Time
I live in several times like an insect in amber, motionless and so outside of time, for my limbs are motionless and I cast no shadow on the wall, sunk in a cave as in motionless amber and so nonexistent;
I live in several times, motionless but furnished with all motion, for I dwell in space and belong to it and everything that is space lends me its touching, transient form;
I live in several times, nonexistent, painfully motionless and painfully in motion and I truly don’t know what is given to me and what is taken away forever.
†This book was kindly provided by HarperCollins Publishers
comments
Loved that. linking.
– vanishingword (04/09 at 12:24 AM)
Page 1 of 1 pages of comments
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About this Post
- Posted by: Bud Parr
- Date: April 04, 2007
- Filed Under:
Wise Men Fish Here: Literature
- Comments:1
- Links to this Post: Technorati
