KING POPIEL |
Popiel, a legendary king of Polish prehistory, is said to have been eaten by mice on his island in the middle of a big lake. |
- Those were not, it is certain, crimes just like ours.
- It was all about dugouts carved out of linden trunks
- And some beavers' pelts. He ruled over marshes
- Where the moose echoes in a moon of acid frosts
- And lynxes walk in springtime onto the drying holms.
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- His palisade, his timber fort, and the tower
- Built by the fins of the gods of night
- Could be seen beyond the water by the hidden hunter
- Who dared not push aside the branches with his bow.
- Until one of them returned with the news. Over the deep into the rushes
- The wind chased the largest boat, and it was empty.
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- Mice have eaten Popiel. The diamond-studded crown
- He got later. And to him, who vanished forever,
- Who kept in his treasury three Gothic coins
- And bars of bronze, to him who went away,
- No one knows where, with his children and women,
- To him lands and seas were left by Galileo,
- Newton and Einstein. So that, for long centuries
- He might smooth, on his throne, his javelin with a knife.
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----------------------------------------------------- ------CZESLAW MILOSZ Mongeron, 1958 |
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