… everyone’s quoting.
Buttons
Only the buttons did not yield
Witness of crime that survived death
They come from depths upon the surface
The only tribute on their graves
They are attesting God will count
Extend his mercy upon them
But how to raise from the dead
If they’re a clammy piece of earth
A bird flew over, a cloud is passing
A leaf is dropping, a mallow grows
Heavens above are filled with silence
The Katyn forest smokes with fog
Only the buttons did not yield
Powerful voice of silenced choirs
Only the buttons did not yield
Buttons from coats and uniforms
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The Katyn forest smokes with fog again.
I got the translation of “Buttons” from an anonymous commenter on a thread about the Polish crash in Smolensk. The third stanza appears here, on the Polish government’s page about the president:
…przeleciał ptak przepływa obłok
upada liść kiełkuje ślaz
i cisza jest na wysokościach
i dymi mgłą katyński las…
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Zbigniew Herbert is a ding an sich, cast a cold eye kind of guy. Many of his poems have him reckoning with objects – buttons… or pebbles:
Pebble
The pebble
is a perfect creature
equal to itself
mindful of its limits
filled exactly
with a pebbly meaning
with a scent that does not remind one of anything
does not frighten anything away does not arouse desire
its ardour and coldness
are just and full of dignity
I feel a heavy remorse
when I hold it in my hand
and its noble body
is permeated by false warmth
— Pebbles cannot be tamed
to the end they will look at us
with a calm and very clear eye
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Herbert’s one of many poets attracted to the impassive enduring thingness of the world; our childish passions do us in; they need tempering by the earth.
And yet, in words very similar to Camus’ (“[O]ne must keep intact in oneself a freshness, a cool wellspring of joy, love the day that escapes injustice.”), Herbert also writes:
beware of dryness of heart love the morning spring
the bird with an unknown name the winter oak
light on a wall the splendour of the sky
they don’t need your warm breath
they are there to say: no one will console you
The pebble doesn’t need your warmth; nature doesn’t need your warmth. Nature’s not going to reach out and touch you…
Somehow you have to toughen yourself up to something approaching a pebble … a pebble with a heart in it… Keep a calm clear and cold eye. A dry eye. But not a dry heart.
Or, as Flaubert said, we should be “equal to our destiny, that’s to say, impassive like it.” Even with a beating heart.
Keep your mind in hell, and despair not.