The Rain

When my older brother

came back from war

he had on his forehead a little silver star

and under the star

an abyss

a splinter of shrapnel

hit him at Verdun

or perhaps at Grünwald

(he’d forgotten the details)

he used to talk much

in many languages

but he liked most of all

the language of history

until losing breath

he commanded his dead pals to run

Roland Kowaski Hannibal

he shouted

that this was the last crusade

that Carthage soon would fall

and then sobbing confessed

that Napoleon did not like him

we looked at him

getting paler and paler

abandoned by his senses

he turned slowly into a monument

into musical shells of ears

entered a stone forest

and the skin of his face

was secured

with the blind dry

buttons of eyes

nothing was left him

but touch

what stories

he told with his hands

in the right he had romances

in the left soldier’s memories

they took my brother

and carried him out of town

he returns every fall

slim and very quiet

he does not want to come in

he knocks at the window for me

we walk together in the streets

and he recites to me

improbable tales

touching my face

with blind fingers of rain

~by Zbigniew Herbert

Translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Peter Dale Scott

“The Rain” by Zbigniew Herbert from Selected Poems of Zbigniew Herbert, Edited and Translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Peter Dale Scott. English translation copyright �© 1968 by Czeslaw Milosz and Peter Scott. Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, www.harpercollins.com

Source: Selected Poems of Zbigniew Herbert (The Ecco Press, 1985).