Pause for Art: Creative Moments from Harvard is a video series produced by the Office for the Arts at Harvard to offer beauty, comfort and connection. Here is painter, poet and Harvard Professor of English Peter Sacks reading "To Ryszard Krynicki – A Letter" by the Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert. The full transcript is below. (Translation: John Carpenter and Bogdana Carpenter)

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"To Ryszard Krynicki – A Letter"
By the Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert
Not much will remain Ryszard really not much
of the poetry of this insane century certainly Rilke Eliot
a few other distinguished shamans who knew the secret
of conjuring a form with words that resists the action of time without which
no phrase is worth remembering and speech is like sand

those school notebooks of ours sincerely tormented
with traces of sweat tears and blood will be
like the text of a song without music for the eternal proofreader
honorably righteous more than obvious

too easily we came to believe that beauty does not save
that it leads the light-hearted from dream to dream to death
none of us knew how to awaken the dryad of a poplar
to read the writing of clouds
this is why the unicorn won’t cross our tracks
we won’t bring to life a ship in the bay a peacock a rose
only nakedness remains for us and we stand naked
on the right the better side of the tryptych
The Last Judgment

we took public affairs on our thin shoulders
recording suffering the struggle with tyranny with lying
but - you have to admit – we had opponents despicably small
so was it worth it to lower holy speech
to the babble of the speakers platform the black foam of the newspapers

in our poems Ryszard there is so little joy - daughter of the gods -
too few luminous dusks mirrors wreaths of rapture
nothing but dark psalmodies stammerings of animulae
urns of ashes in the burnt garden

in spite of history in spite of fate
human misdeeds what strength is needed to whisper
in the garden of betrayal a silent night

what strength of spirit
beating blindly with despair against despair
a spark of light a word of reconciliation

so the dancing circle will last forever in the thick grass
so the birth of a child and every beginning is blessed
gifts of air earth fire and water

This I don’t know - my friend - and is why
I am sending you these owl’s puzzles in the night
a warm embrace

greetings from my shadow

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