News at Eleven: In an elegy for his teacher,

the philosopher Henryk Elzenberg, [Zbigniew] Herbert writes that "Your severe gentleness delicate strength/Taught me to weather the world like a thinking stone." And in a poem called "Pebble," he writes: "The pebble/is a perfect creature [ . . . ] its ardor and coldness/are just and full of dignity."

from Los Angeles Times: 'Collected Poems' by Zbigniew Herbert

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