<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=431924" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>For Zbigniew Herbert, Summer, 1971, Los Angeles</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">No matter how hard I listen, the wind speaks<br>One syllable, which has no comfort in it--<br>Only a rasping of air through the dead elm.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> *</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Once a poet told me of his friend who was torn apart<br>By two pigs in a field in Poland. The man<br>Was a prisoner of the Nazis, and they watched,<br>He said, with interest and a drunken approval . . .<br>If terror is a state of complete understanding,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then there was probably a point at which the man<br>Went mad, and felt nothing, though certainly<br>He understood everything that was there: after all,<br>He could see blood splash beneath him on the stubble,<br>He could hear singing float toward him from the barracks.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> *</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And though I don't know much about madness,<br>I know it lives in the thin body like a harp<br>Behind the rib cage. It makes it painful to move.<br>And when you kneel in madness your knees are glass,<br>And so you must stand up again with great care.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> *</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Maybe this wind was what he heard in 1941.<br>Maybe I have raised a dead man into this air,<br>And now I will have to bury him inside my body,<br>And breathe him in, and do nothing but listen--<br>Until I hear the black blood rushing over<br>The stone of my skull, and believe it is music.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But some things are not possible on the earth.<br>And that is why people make poems about the dead.<br>And the dead watch over then, until they are finished:<br>Until their hands feel like glass on the page,<br>And snow collects in the blind eyes of statues.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Larry+Levis">Larry Levis</a><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=431924" data-title="For Zbigniew Herbert, Summer, 1971, Los Angeles de Larry Levis" data-description="No matter how hard I listen, the wind speaks One syllable, which has no comfort in it-- Only a rasping of air through the dead elm. * Once a poet told me of his friend who was torn apart By two pigs in a field in Poland. The man Was a prisoner ..."></div> </div> </div>

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