Poezje wybrane - Selected poems

KING POPIELPopiel, a legendary king of Polish prehistory, is said to havebeen 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 trunksAnd some beavers' pelts. He ruled over marshesWhere the moose echoes in a moon of acid frostsAnd lynxes walk in springtime onto the drying holms.His palisade, his timber fort, and the towerBuilt by the fins of the gods of nightCould be seen beyond the water by the hidden hunterWho dared not push aside the branches with his bow.Until one of them returned with the news. Over the deep into the rushesThe wind chased the largest boat, and it was empty.Mice have eaten Popiel. The diamond-studded crownHe got later. And to him, who vanished forever,Who kept in his treasury three Gothic coinsAnd 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 centuriesHe might smooth, on his throne, his javelin with a knife.Montgeron, 1958translated by Czesław Miłosz127