Translated by Przemyslaw Musialowski 8/20/2018
Kneeling before you,
I bow my head low,
confessing the truths
due to the Motherland:
it's you who taught me
to see beauty with a word,
and when I entrusted
my soul to you,
you made the bed
with mirror thought
- looking-glass' reflection -
dressed in pensive ponderings.
I love you, Poland,
when you are blooming in spring.
Your fertile fields
of gold wheat and barley.
I love,
when in summer,
in the aroma of linden trees,
adorned with flowers,
you lure with cool shade.
I love in autumn:
saddened,
rainy.
I love with pure and
unchanging love,
full of joy
of sins remission:
of Christmas Eve
examination of conscience.
I love, from south to north,
in February cold
and in hot July.
Your steel statues
of the Carpathian peaks.
Your streams, when rumbling
they carry the March ice floes.
Your beautiful sparkling willow greens
of Masurian waters,
when the sun is chasing
dancing rays
-with emerald's spark
of silver-plated steel,
before they'll disappear
with colors of the rainbow
in the hazy distance.
Your ancient castles,
standing proudly since the times of Piasts.
Your dunes, tamed with dwarf pine,
your country homesteads on the Bug and Prosna.
Polish wolves', eager for blood,
fearful thundering voices.
The heroic fate of the brave Polish armies.
Golden wheat ears of liberation
in the coat of arms of the Nation.
At the sources of the Vistula
I love you with reverie:
And over transparent waters
further reaches
I sob.
You'll hug me,
Mother!
Your son,
when you'll tuck me in
as my only Ma
-buried,
with eternal... loving.
Wieslaw Musialowski 10/9/2001
Friends, I am asking for your understanding, because all my translations must be proofread and corrected. Poems are hard to translate (even in free verse translations). The original is rhymed. Regards
The Carpathian Mountains or Carpathians are a mountain range system forming an arc roughly 1,500 km (932 mi) long across Central and Eastern Europe, making them the second-longest mountain range in Europe (after the Scandinavian Mountains) .
Masuria - is a region in northern Poland famous for its 2,000 lakes. Before the end of World War II, it was mostly inhabited by Polish-speaking Lutheran Masurians and constituted a part of East Prussia. Masuria occupies much of the Masurian Lake District. Its biggest city is Ełk, often regarded as its capital.
The Piast dynasty was the first historical ruling dynasty of Poland. The first documented Polish monarch was Prince Mieszko I (c.930-992)
The Bug River (Polish: Bug) is a major river mostly located in Eastern Europe, which flows through three countries with a total length of 774 kilometres.
The Prosna is a river in central Poland, a tributary of the Warta river (near Pyzdry) , with a length of 227 kilometres.
The Vistula (Polish: Wisła) is the longest and largest river in Poland and the 9th longest river in Europe, at 1,047 kilometres (651 miles) in length.
