"PRACTICAL RECOMMENDATIONS IN THE EVENT OF A CATASTROPHE
It usually begins innocently enough with an acceleration, unnoticeable at first, of the turning of the earth. Leave home at once and do not bring along any of your family. Take a few indispensable things. Place yourself as far as possible from the centre, near the forests the seas or the mountains, before the whirling motion as it gets stronger from minute to minute begins to pour in towards the middle, suffocating in ghettoes, closets, basements. Hang on forcefully to the outer circumference. Keep your head down. Have your two hands constantly free,.Take good care of the muscles of your legs."
Reprinted in Zbigniew Herbert, The Collected Poems: 1956-1998, translated from the Polish and edited by Alissa Valles, with additional translations by Czeslaw Milosz and Peter Dale Scott, & an introduction by Adam Zagajewski (New York: Ecco, 2007), at 262.
