Thank you, thank you, abbacat!

[mehinda]

Baptism

Veterans of forty-day floods
tried by the sundering of the heavens
they who saw mountains die
and mice find salvation
now sit out on the pier
and watch the waving grain
beautiful as a waterfall
--it was a fortunate notion
to entrust hope to the birds
this made their faith strong
as a pigeon house

survivors of houses on fire
where men burn like feathers
peer into the insides of skulls
into mindless scrolls of pink anatomy
they who know a body's weight
say
the criminal cat and astronomer
well deserved to lie motionless
a shallow plain levels
the evil and the good

finally we with rainbow clods of earth under our lids
who discern upward motion and downward motion
sacrifices sent up
eyelids cast down
we say
they are both right
those baptized by water
those baptized by fire
will be reconciled by nothingness
or mercy

and only we against whom
the Church fathers would have written pamphlets
contra académicos
only we will meet with a terrible fate
flames and lamentation
for having received a baptism of earth
we were too valiant in our uncertainty

-Zbigniew Herbert