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Sleep Easy

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Sleep easy, young Tadeus Makulski

Sleep easy, brave Zigmunt Kovacs too

Your torment of so many years is over

Sleep easy under English morning dew.

 

Continuing your fight against the enemy

High in foreign English cloudy sky

Not prepared to yield up your homeland

But avenge the Fates, if necessary, die.

 

Forsaking kith and kin in farms and factories

Abandoning your lifetime’s peaceful path

The transience of 45’s sweet victory

The sickening bile of Yalta’s aftermath.

 

Would you have offered such brave resistance

That sacrifice should bring reward so cruel

To free your land from the heel of Hitler

For 50 years to bow to Russian rule?

 

Divided and picked over through the centuries

By masters of the Volga and the Rhine

Between the German eagle and the Russian bear

A carcass of the Oder-Neisse line.

 

You have not fought and died in vain for Freedom

For Polska, for love of which you flew

Sleep easy, young Tadeus Makulski

Sleep easy, brave Zigmunt Kovacs too.

 

Perhaps your spirits feared to walk your homeland

But Poland now embraces freedoms new;

Do wideja, young Tadeus Makulski

Djekuya, brave Zigmunt Kovacs too

◄ The Battle of Waterloo

Chinese Buffet - As Much As You Can Eat ►

Comments

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Dave Bradley

Sat 13th Nov 2010 15:52

Moving indeed. I was in Krakow in September and found an open air display on their liberation struggle fascinating and inspiring. A nearby memorial to the Katyn massacre was also very impressive, with its recent additions in respect of the awful plane crash in which so many of their leaders died, while trying to visit Katyn. But they keep bouncing back. I played table tennis this week against an all-Polish team of bus drivers here in Liverpool, and their spirit is definitely intact!

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winston plowes

Fri 12th Nov 2010 21:31

P.S. Where is the little monument John?

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winston plowes

Fri 12th Nov 2010 21:31

Hi John A different subject for you? liked this . liked the repetition of names. and on my first reading through it didn't strike me that there was a rhyme going on! Thats how rhyme should be for me, unforced and reinforcing the power of your poem. Win x

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Greg Freeman

Fri 12th Nov 2010 08:01

I found this really moving, John. Excellent work

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