When truth no longer matters

The great poets are easily recognizable; in a moment the minds knows, the heart feels, the spirit senses a quality involving silence and attention. Read it, and at once you know the poetry that will last all your life. Among West Indian poets, I have that sense especially about Derek Walcott and Martin Carter and Lorna Goodison.

I also have that sense of greatness about the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins, of course, and Seamus Heaney and in the last few years I regularly read Zbigniew Herbert’s poems, in translation, and have felt the frisson that shivers in one as a real poet goes to work.

Zbigniew Herbert was born in 1924 in Lwow. In his teens he fought in the Polish underground resistance against the Nazis. After the war he studied Economics, Law and Philosophy at the Universities of Krakow and Warsaw. His poetry, for long banned under Communism but increasingly acclaimed as it gradually saw the light of day throughout Europe, resists simple categorization. He writes that he wants to understand Pascal’s night, the prophets’ melancholy, the wrath of Achilles, the fury of mass murderers, the dreams of Mary Queen of Scots, the fear of Neanderthals, the last Aztec’s despair, Nietzsche’s long dying, the Lascaux painters’ joy.

One of Herbert’s major themes is to bear witness to the truth. Each individual must see events, and his own experience of them, with absolute clarity. No matter what obstacles are in his way, he must be faithful to the truth of this experience and keep a covenant with it. The greatest enemy of clarity is the manipulation of information, and of reality, at the service of power and propaganda; what Herbert calls “the monster.” He would have been frightened on behalf of us all at the appalling damage being inflicted on mankind in this newly emerging ‘post-truth’ age where anybody can say anything and not be held to any sort of account – can indeed expect to be admired and followed.

The transmission and the acquisition of truth is a constant battle. Each of us is increasingly surrounded by false information, and those who have access to the truth methodically withhold or twist it. The withholding of truth is a major strategy of power, deliberate and concerted misrepresentation on the widest scale, aiming ultimately at a forcible change of collective identity through the media, publishing, and political organs. And, though this theme once applied to the old Communist systems, it has now in a Trumpian world a universal application. Those bearing witness to the truth are no longer safe in the knowledge that truth will prevail over lies.

Here is a poem taken from Herbert’s collection of poems translated into English, Report from the Besieged City. The poems in this collection were written between 1956 and 1982.

From the Top of the Stairs

sometimes we dream those at the top of the stairs come down that is to us and as we are chewing bread over the newspaper they say

-now let’s talk man to man what the posters shout out isn’t true we carry the truth in tightly locked lips it is cruel and much too heavy so we bear the burden by ourselves we aren’t happy we would gladly stay here

those are dreams of course they can come true or not come true so we will continue to cultivate our square of dirt square of stone

with a light head a cigarette behind the ear and not a drop of hope in the heart

Owith us it’s different sweepers of squares hostages of a better future those at the top of the stairs appear to us rarely with a hushing finger always at the mouth

we are patient our wives darn the sunday shirts we talk of food rations soccer prices of shoes while on saturday we tilt the head backward and drink

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ur freedom as individuals and our ability to fulfil a real purpose in life depend upon the accuracy with which we are able to perceive the suffering around us, bear witness to it, and try to do something about what is wrong. No poet has recognized that more clearly than Zbigniew Herbert.