Surging like a vast current of salmon or sheatfish, 
Coiling up and down like an iron serpent 
That rears now its torso, now its head, 
The armed horsemen breast the prairie grass. -- 
But hold! my song's device breaks down: 
My Muse begs a rest, having drained her cup 
Empty of sweet nectar; and so, farewell 
To you, on that steppeland rise, 


My pair of golden, sun-drenched statues! 
My iron ranks wallowing in the grass and herbage! 
One needs here the yearning of a Malczewski-- 
The kind found in men who are half angels. 
One ought to sing here; meanwhile I weave fables. 
Whenever I stir up the ashes of my homeland 
And then raise my hand once more to the harp, 
Specters from the grave rise before me--specters 


So lovely! So transparent! Fresh! Alive! Young! 
That I am incapable of shedding real tears over them: 
And yet I lead them in a dance about the valleys. 
They take from my heart whatever they like: 
A sonnet, a tragedy, a legend or sublime ode. 
It is all that I have, all that I cherish and believe in. 
Believe in. . . You ask me, my dear reader, 
What I believe in? If I told, it would raise a furor. 


In the first place, this rhyme which scoffs and reviles 
Has a political credo: these are Dantesque regions 
You have entered. I believe with a pagan's heart 
In Shakespeare's rhymes, in Dante and in Homer. 
I believe in the commonwealth of an only son -- 
In our case it was that surly fellow--Mochnacki! 
Though he never stopped spinning his mighty dreams, 
He allowed the Dictator to stretch him upon a cross. 


I believe that he came into being in human form 
And went to the Great Judgment that lights up
Our land; on the way, he dropped in on the Aristocracy 
And bided in that flameless Hell for three days;
Then in a little book he passed judgment on his brothers: 
Those who are upright and those who feel no shame;
In him I believe, and in his two unfinished books: 
I believe in all the saints of our émigré circles, 


And in their spiritual communion with our nation; 
In the forgiveness of sins committed by our leaders
And the resurrection of our elected Sejm under Herod 
Which being a very amusing body will constitute
The best proof of the resurrection of the body-- 
The supreme instance of bodily resuscitation;
And finally, secure as to the future, I should add 
That I believe in the life everlasting of that Sejm. 


Amen... This amen chokes me, catches in my throat 
Like the amen Macbeth uttered. -- Still, I believe
That like cranes chained to the wing the nations are making 
Progress . . . that knights rise out of the bones. . .
That the tyrant cannot sleep when he bloodies the bed 
Or robs the eagles of the youngest brood. . .
That fire and serpents and fear are his bedfellows. . . 
All this I believe--yes--and in God as well! 


O God! Who has not felt You in the blue fields 
Of Ukraine where the level plains arouse
Such sadness in the soul that ranges over them! -- 
When, accompanied by a windy hymn,
The dust which Tartar hordes drenched in blood 
Takes wing, shrouds the golden sun in ashes,
Blurs, reddens it, then suspends it in the sky 
Like a black buckler with blood-shot eyes -- 


Who has not seen You, Almighty God, 
On that great steppe, under a lifeless sun,
When the mounds on which all crosses stand 
Bring blood to mind--or crooked flames;
When far off thunders a sea of bent-grass, 
Burial mounds cry out with a terrible voice,
The locust unfurls its black rainbows, and the garland 
Of graves melts away into the distance; 


Who has not felt You in the terrors of nature: 
In the great steppe or on Golgotha's hill
Or among columns surmounted not by a roof 
But by a moon and an untold number of stars;
And who in the zest and ardor of youthful feeling 
Has not felt that You exist, or, plucking daisies,
Has not found You in those daisies and forget-me-nots? 
Yet still he seeks You in prayer and good deeds: 


No doubt he will find You -- no doubt he will -- 
I wish small-hearted men a humble faith
And a peaceful death. -- Jehovah's flashing face 
Is of vast measure! When I count up the layers
Of exposed earth and see the bone piles 
Lying there like the standards of lost armies
At the foot of mountain ridges -- skeletal remains 
That also bear witness to God's being -- 


I see that He is not only the God of worms 
And things that creep and crawl upon the dust:
He loves the booming flight of gigantic birds; 
Puts no curb on stampeding horses. . .
He is the flaming plume of proud helms. . . Often 
A great deed will sway Him where a tear-drop
Shed on the church doorstep will not: before Him 
I fall down prostrate -- for He is God!