Mr Cogito Studies His Face in the Mirror by Zbigniew Herbert   In Mr Cogito, the post-modern Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert (1924-1998) takes on no lesser subjects than identity and aging. We enter the heart of the poem I will discuss with the title of the book, “Mr Cogito”—“Cogito,” from Descartes’ “Cogito ergo sum” (“I think, therefore I am”)—and then the full title of this particular poem: “Mr Cogito Studies His Face in the Mirrior.” This poem is a 28-line interrogation of ancestry, in which we travel back in time into the gene pool of Herbert’s Cogito, looking as he gazes at his face in a mirror. “Mr Cogito Studies His Face in the Mirror” begins: Who wrote our faces chicken pox for sure…