My favorite Warsaw poems

A dream about Warsaw / Marek Gaszyński
A song about my Warsaw / Albert Harris
Alarm / Slonimski Antoni
Warsaw Barbican / Wierzyński, Kazimierz
A song to Warsaw / Liebert George
The singing of the walls / Gajcy Tadeusz
A poem for Warsaw / Lechoń Jan
Country gardens / Liebert George
When I go eighteen in the morning, H. Kołaczkowska
Warsaw is likeable
Mokotów march
I will go to the Old Town
Do not even ask
A dream about Warsaw / Marek Gaszyński

I have the same as you
My city and in it
My most beautiful world
The most beautiful days
I left my colorful dreams there

Someday I will stop time
And on the wings like a bird
I will fly as fast as I can
Where my dreams are
And colorful Warsaw days

If you wanted to see the dawn on the Vistula River
Go there with me today
You will see how he will welcome us beautifully
Warsaw day

If you wanted to see it…

text by Marek Gaszyński, Czesław Niemen sang

A song about my Warsaw / Albert Harris

Like a beloved girl's smile,
like a spring awakening breeze,
like the chirping of swallows in the morning,
adolescent feelings unknown,
like dew glistening on the grass,
love born out,
so my heart rejoices in this song
songs about my Warsaw ...

Warsaw, you are my Warsaw!
You are the content of my dreams and dreams,
joyful passers-by with lava,
street bustle and uproar,
You are calling me, you cry longingly
intoxicating songs and words.
How much I wish to see you again today,
o my Warsaw, a dream ...

As I would like with a carefree step
traverse the space of your rags,
walk aimlessly on Marszałkowska Street,
look at the Vistula from the bridge,
take nine to Aleje,
Krakowskie to go for a walk in Nowy Świat,
and see as before, in my young years,
when you laugh at me, Warsaw ...

I know, that you are not like that today,
that you are living bloody days today,
that despair, that the pain is overwhelming you,
that I must cry for you…
But such, how you live in memory
I will restore with my blood,
and believe me, Warsaw, except for songs and tears
I am ready to devote my life to you ...
Albert Harris
Alarm / Slonimski Antoni

“CAUTION! Caution! Passed!
Coma three!”

Someone is running up the stairs.
A door slammed somewhere.

Out of the hustle and bustle
The sound one explodes increases,
He circles groaningly,

The voice of the sirens – in octaves
It's falling – and a groan rises:

“I announce an alarm for the city of Warsaw!”

And silence
Somewhere in advance

It buzzes, buzzes, humming and trembling.
And it burst

Deep down
Once, two, three,

It would be bomb.

It's somewhere further. no worries.
Probably Prague.

Now closer, even closer.
Next door, next door.

A scream like a bloody shred.
And silence, silence, which is increasing.

“Caution! Caution!
I cancel the alarm for the city of Warsaw!”

No, this alarm will not be canceled anymore.
this alarm continues.

Exit, sirens!
Hit, werble, cry, church bells!

Let it play
The orchestra of the march from Wagram,
Under Jena.

Take that groan, regimenty,
Battalions – cannons and tanks,
let it explode,

Let it last
In the holy flame “Marseilles”!

When people leave the church at noon
When the wind rushes across the sky,

When a dark dream falls on Paris,

Who makes me listen so constantly?
Who is it waking me up and calling me??

I hear the noise of the night raids.
They are flowing over the city. These are not airplanes.

Demolished churches are flowing,
Gardens turned into cemeteries,

Ruins, ruins, rubble,
Streets and houses familiar from childhood,

Traugutt and Świętokrzyska,
Niecała and Nowy Świat.

And the city flows on the wings of glory,
And it drops a stone on the heart. Do dna.

I announce an alarm for the city of Warsaw.
Let it last!

Warsaw Barbican / Wierzyński, Kazimierz

Fame of the name of Stejan Starzynski,
builder and defender of Warsaw,
a hero of the war with Germany

If you woke me up, they tore out from under the brick

And they ordered us to look ahead from these cloisters,

Pull the walls apart, I want more extensive

Embracing the view from the tower; behind the walls and beyond

To look at the steep shores; for the marshes of the Vistula,

For forests and sand, into a broad plain,

Fly this way like a guarding eye in the past

It flew from the upper blanks and to the horizons

Gird, what's mine…

It was blowing Mazovia from here,

Fat bees and algae trees rustled,

In the grassy clearings, the wind shook the hollow oats,

The woolly and rough fescue foamed,

And in winter, among the pines, into snow-covered green

He was entering, quietly treading, magic deer

And from the golden horns he shone with the fire of Christmas Eve.

I remember that beauty. Rivers ran quietly,

Today, the wave is still drowsy on this shore;

But a murmur trembled in the roots, he went up a long way,

Lightning struck the oaks, the forests were on fire:

The glow was on watch. The wind carried the fires away.

Then he went to cut open age with his sword,

Who to sleep in this country lay down with an open eyelid:

Chrobry measured the South, Midnight – Boleslaw,

The ringers, for the sad funeral of the Jagiellonians

Batory ordered to ring church bells from the cannons –

And the nation was rushing, he moaned in the sleigh in Shrovetide

And on the plain of the crowd, he took a sleigh ride,

The horses were racing through the snow in a fiery race,

The tar was burning in the rush and the whips crackled!

Until the wind put out the lights, on the blade he sat empty

And all roads dropped to blow.

What's next?

Pull the walls apart. They told me to look.

And my eyes strained red. But pale.

And I wanted to see through this darkness. In vain!

Stones broke above the heart, fallen,

The rubble broke on the fortress and poured down on me,

Old rafters creaked, decay has spread,

I heard, like the bridge collapsed, shooting ranges go deaf,

Knights break like a sword, wordless leave.

…Eagle Owl sat on the roof and flashed from the lookout.

It was better to go down, hide, collapse to the bottom,

Crush the crushed ruins randomly,

Bury yourself in the basement, in the stuffy, underground,

Drag yourself to moss and wall yourself up alive:

The towers in the walls were frozen up with the chimney,

Empty moats at the bottom, long coffins, are dozing.

I can't hear anything down here: sometimes sudden patter

It will fly through the streets, it will bounce dullly,

Probably the people are rising, he has a knife in his coat

And stabs traitors with it. You hear? – the crowds caught up with them

And they drag the Kossakowski family with their heads on the cobblestones at night.

This is revenge.

– I hear you, I breathe deeply.

Until the last king was gone.

Over my mound of rubble

The vultures flew screaming, that they would leave the city

And they followed the army of the French emperor,

And the trampled lands were covered with copper

Skeleton lines, corpse birds,

They ate the brain from warm skulls, a dead heart bit.

Yet someone woke me up. Someone was running here in the evening

In uniform with Nowy Świat; at night in the Old Town

The people went to the Arsenal. Someone sensed me then,

He heard the ground in the lumps with a soft rustling sound,

As she falls awake and falls deeper into the room,

Down a hundred times, shattered with a hoof,

He drinks spilled blood and watches over the graves.

The cruel dew is already drying up and new blood is dawning.

Szopen was going to the concert, a Julo do Sally

He wrote a farewell to the traveling crowd:

“Motherland nice, goodbye!” – and they cried for a long time,

When in April, in the cry of spring, lying broke out

And when in September leaves, in sixteen versts,

Paskiewicz was crowded, he knocked out the eyes of the city

And he plunged the whole country into blindness, torn,

He called kibitkami, hung on the buttresses.

Don't cry, widow mother, now or later,

How many times will travelers scare you with a letter,

How many times will they bring lost hope?,

Secret books and writings from Paris from Leipzig:

Still this earth to suffer, shake off the terror

In the Carmelite church and kneel at the cross.

Poet sing it out, let him love and blaspheme.

Because will the world hear her?? He's still listening hard,

In her sleep, she screamed again: from a patched shotgun,

In the marshy backwoods, from Podlasie blows

The Cossack regiment is aiming, to the Ruthenian papaya,

Heals shots with mud, a cobweb of wound,

And Father Brzóski's peasantry is shouting to Europe.

Until the scream turned to whispers, the sept – in thoughtfulness,

Thoughts – into burning anger and they went round

Around, all over the country and they will go around,

Confess secrets, induce shadows,

Wrap crosses in forests secretly,

To graft the heart to rebellion, practice to the end,

Every mother will remember it every evening:

Incite pride, ziemio – no longer in vain!

Because it will come out of your blast, he'll get away from the witchcraft,

He waited in the typesetting room, in workers' fonts,

He'll give away the gun, he will summon the army and then, when he screams

And he will sow the uniforms in the meadows of Krakow,

And the soldiers are told to go against everything,

Do not backward passively, you will not escape these hands,

This strength, which he summoned and the swords, what he translated!

He will not give you back for your beauty to the Royal Łazienki

Neither to the peasants for their poverty, nor for any gentlemen,

Fallen wall levers, the pole will stick at the border,

He will punish the reluctant, and the cellar smell

With the breeze of his cloak he will go far

And the air of freedom will evoke a tragic one,

To die with an open eyelid and live here.

He picked us up. I can feel my wall moving deep inside,

The raised walls keep growing, the cellars were opened,

Who is calling me, to get up and climb the mountain,

He was tightening his belt of stone and shining cotton wool here.

I can feel it, how the rubble crumbles, falls off from under the brick.

I can see the city and freedom.

Watch with me further,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Pull the walls apart. I want more extensive

Embracing the view from the tower.

That's what they told me to be here.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I wrote this a year ago.

Today, when I'm looking for a rhyme,

What the future was to tell these defensive walls,

I can't find a word, I can smell smoke,

Debris under the foot and in the sound I get lost with the smell,

Ach, like other than the echo used in those lines,

Echo guns, the king's cannons, Batorowa fame –

Today, when I touch the ruins of Warsaw with my pen,

I have no future in my eyes, but the tombstone.

This poem was supposed to dispel the darkness on the horizon,

So that you can see ours from the barbican of Prussia,

Like a patrol on the northern front,

Take the land as far as the sea and set up guard,

Then to the East he would scream, because the Republic of Poland

It's leaking through your fingers there, like sieve water,

On the east, behind the slippery mountain pass, where he straddled

You are going into the abyss with Mary and the holy sign,

And in the steppes lapwings play, the wind is rushing,

Wild wind on the deserted edge of Jagiełło.

Not for the empty one, he was supposed to say everything in praise

Neither would the nation perfect a vain one in pride,

But that my people might arise like the rock

And he did not linger for centuries in traveling slavery,

A cripple broken, what stretches out his hands

To the powerful of this world as if for a bite of alms,

For lost freedom! No, never again!

These words were to grow like a renovated wall,

Defensive and conquering, visible from all sides,

And the barbican was to open the fortress gates,

Gates to the world – and free forever

Give Poland the gate to Rome.

So I thought and dreamed…

Today when I'm looking for a rhyme,

By the wide arc of this free metaphor

Country statue set, as is God's will

She preached Latin with her lip the loudest

In the North of the Mediterranean you distribute the Sea;

When I think, that of marbles above a muscle of strength

Bring out angel flight and soar it high

In a circle, which the prophets wrote over Poland

And we should build such a church with a rock,

Indefatigable by Hell…

Today when I'm looking for a rhyme

And as I look straight ahead, around or over the top,

Dread everywhere, a feather rolls down under the shaky one,

Nation, instead of at the top, I see at the bottom again,

The dust of war bites my eyes, it descends inertly

At the torn banners, to the hollow brow –

Today when I look ahead and look around,

How our destruction is likened to works,

From Rome, I can see the Colosseum all over Poland.

Ach, for they hurried back to Shrovetide in the sleigh

And on the plain of crowds they rode a sleigh ride,

The horses were racing through the snow in a fiery race,

The tar was burning in the rush and the whip crackled…

From the solitary grandeur, the sound remained empty

And graves among junipers.

What's next, what's next?!

One was saved by a cruel warning,

That freedom is more than tragic in this country,

That you have to fight for her like a soldier for Kutno,

Where every local willow flowed with blood,

How about Lviv, how about Modlin; as for any city

The eleventh was fought over our division

Pallas-Athene, a deity of bravery and understanding…

Because a brave soldier fought, the peasant fell next to the man,

(Today we are silent and silent about it in Europe),

He walked with a bayonet at night, while the iron slept

And while the tanks waited, until it gets light,

He searches for the heart in a German uniform with a bayonet,

In the woods, he scared them by storm, stabbed the ground through his heart

And so she was poured with blood by the walker on foot,

The batteries were calling like that, so was the stirrup ringing,

Led by the goddess of bravery and reason…

When war time is over, when the earth blooms,

Fatty bees as they rise from the linden noise,

And in the fields painted silver and blue

Again, the Polish countryside is quiet in the midst of hay,

A butterfly will land like a beech in Mazovia –

Believe it, this time will be as dangerous as war,

The lions then breed at the sea of ​​Thermopylae,

Lions in the Westerplatte pits! From the Warsaw catacombs

And from these walls full of cries of today

Jakub will lead the sky ladder

And the most difficult stars will determine our future,

And the nation, the whole nation, how to reach far

He has to look with his eyelid open day and night

Into the pupil of destiny, in Rome on the Great Vistula.

History Museum! I thought so and I think so today.

And you will ask, from what to take strength and raise

It is not known when the work was conceived,

Is not enough death, the catacombs are not enough,

When so much fire went out, so much blood had drained,

What people to build, when cruel cut

It passed like a blemish over the face and through history,

I tell you – there is one spell for all

And there is one impassable turn ahead of us,

Is it who it intoxicates, or who hurts:

Poles must be made of iron, made of iron.

A helmet over the forehead of a genius and a spear by his side –

Such a statue of the nation will arise, palado,

Above cities in ruins and fate in darkness,

Over a doom that has never been dormant in this country.

Swords shine and glory, our arsenal proud,

The square is radiant, castle, cathedral walls,

the king, looking back at the past from a lofty column

And crazy, what a sign is waiting on the walls gathered.

And then let God's judgment be done on us

And let the judgment of the stars fall in a worldly noise:

Come out across the barbican bridge for centuries

Shine with a spear and forehead, bravery and understanding.

A song to Warsaw / Liebert George

Warsaw! Ach, another time
Run away from your walls –
Zygmunt's sword faded in the distance.
Royal Castle. New Reunion…

Curse your pavement all the time,
Your tinsel and chic, your bitter bread,
I was running away from here, going into the head –
How could I even endure a day?!

And later – over the Kierbedzia bridge.
Warsaw! I was coming back again,
Shy, full of tender words
And how sensitive to your voice…

Find me another town like this –
That gloomy spell, this sleepy crowd,
Top and dumb full of pride.
Steadfast flaws, funny virtues…

Find me a second such angle,
What in itself – glad of myself,
Neither looks at the world
And talk – how to run for me from here?

Something salt in the eye of our cities.
Warsaw! I love your feet beat,
Your spleen. your pawnshop receipt,
Every eye has baked more than once…

Your accent in my ears sounds
And despite the curses, Krakow threats –
I love your sweetheart, and your caddy
And always charming…

Here comes a laurel. myrtle blooms.
It echoes across and along –
Lechonia a joke. Tuwim's poem
And Boya-sage with a muse flirting…

Neither is the West here, nor the East –
Something like that, as if you were standing in the doorway
I have relatives here – family, but!
Forsytow our grateful family…

Snobs here, the reader, believe.
Kingdom! – I know something about it myself
I know a dignitary
And the sugar factory, too…

God with them! Your star continues
Bright among native spheres –
Somewhere, a view, a square
Some faint fog from the Vistula…

Streets of the outlet of the monument square
Somewhere a house, somewhere a corner.
What day could I dream of?.
Sensitive – under the keen eye of the authorities…

You are our thoughts, our hearts.
You sense what's going on, you know the content –
November louse.. May news!
And it's stuffy in here, to be honest…

That's for sure – I have no betrayals in you,
You look straight at our eyes.
And your pavement can make a voice,
At the sound of which Norwid paled…

O. the city of my first tears.
Pale feelings – sweet splinters,
My amity. God's graces
And the first storms and the first disasters!

Warsaw! I hear your voice today.
When he runs with noise, the breeze grows
Among the Hutsul hills and trees,
Where me. not wanting to, zagnał the…

The singing of the walls / Gajcy Tadeusz

At night, when the city goes to sleep for the third time,
and the sky will become black with a cloud,
stand up silently, as children do,
and put the conch of the ear to the walls.

You will barely sigh, and it will catch you
from the very bottom of the floors with the keyboard
in the noise and murmurs of a swirling blizzard
past lives the painful voice of the choir.

“Ivy of voices from under the ruins and ashes
we climb to the roofs and sleep at night,
you, Warsaw, in our dreams you dream,
humming our mourning train in September.”

– In the morning I ran to the bakery for bread
(and the bread is still waiting there at home),
and I am lying helplessly with the basket,
right behind the corner, unknown to anyone…

– I was just grabbing a grenade with my hand,
to greet the tanks accurately,
the earth was fractured, zoran –
Suddenly my world was deadly dark…

– We both carried them on a stretcher,
still a blanket covered his legs,
because they were shouting around, that fire…

I wrote on a piece of paper: “My dear…”

“Ivy of voices from under the ruins and ashes
we climb to the roofs and sleep at night,
you, Warsaw, in our dreams you dream,
humming our mourning train in September.”

Listen to these pathetic voices fervently,
before the morning dawn will silence them in heaven
and a new city in a tight chord
triumphant days he will bury again.

Listen to these voices, because I happily follow it
he was saved in a tragic need,
that you might break the daily bread more justly
and he lived for them and for himself better.
*
How not to love these broken walls,
this city, which drifts away at night,
when both are in Greek marble –
and Warsaw died, and alive.

A poem for Warsaw / Lechoń Jan

When the snow softly slid with the winter weather
And the bloody sun was dying sadly over the roofs,
From the monument erected with the consent of the invaders,
Mickiewicz looked at Warsaw thoughtfully.

Blown in cold wind, blowing from the Vistula River,
The smell of dead leaves and decay,
He permeated all people with the innermost ideas
And the walls, never seen in his lifetime.

Looking at the Royal Castle, shattered head,
In the skeletons of churches like monstrous tunnels,
He measured it, what made Herculanum new,
Which went to martyrdom voluntarily.

He saw the glow over the city and the prison bars,
Atrocities unknown to the human imagination
And he heard, when the Moscow cannons died down,
In order to help this torment with his silence.

And as God on the day of judgment with the sword of the Archangel,
Leading the bard with his hand to the left and right,
He separated these, who, silently, did not bow their foreheads,
From these, which are the nation's filthy crust.

And then a great subject trembled in the bronze heart,
Which no one else can say with dignity
It was in this whirlwind from the Vistula that he began the poem:
“Warsaw is always free, You are like health”.
Country gardens / Liebert George
^ top

Away from noisy streets, temples, visited, uproar,
Otulone murkami, under the foot of Warsaw.
They sleep silent, country gardens.

There is great dust and hot smoke over the city.
In the gardens, trees are fresh and the sun is calm.
Fragrant twilight and coolness.

At the time of the day. once you run around nothing gives you boredom.
Heat, like a flower undercut, falls to the ground.
Streets and squares are depopulated.

here, under a canopy of twigs and the sky.
With a though, that I don't need to love and go crazy anymore.
I fall asleep on hot noons.

 

When I go eighteen in the morning, H. Kołaczkowska

although tight, although the piston,
I look at my beloved city,
which amazes me every step of the way.
Because here is Marszałkowska and Route W-Z,
Krakow suburb
and tunnel, and soon…

Bridge on the right, bridge on the left,
and at the bottom Wista flows,
a house grows here, a house grows there,
by the hour.
Buses flash red,
they look through the windows of the trams.
Still more buzz, still more of us
in Warsaw, the nicest city.

When I come back from Prague after work,
I pass a row of new houses
and I stand on the shore, by taking your time
look at the capital city from here.
Because the Old Town is already rising there,
pink Mariensztat
smiles right…

Bridge on the right, bridge on the left,
and at the bottom Wista flows,
a house grows here, a house grows there,
by the hour.
And on the Vistula, canoes sail,
the workers sing after work.
Still more buzz, still more of us
in Warsaw, the nicest city.

And on Sunday when the day is close,
I can see a glow from the bridge of lights,
when in distant windows, in one moment,
the night lights up thousands of stars.
And I look at the water, the lanterns tremble in it,
and I sing to my girlfriend
this song:

Bridge on the right, bridge on the left,
and at the bottom the Vistula flows,
a house grows here, a house grows there,
by the hour.
Buses flash red,
they look through the windows of the trams.
Still more buzz, still more of us,
in Warsaw, the nicest city.
Warsaw is likeable

You have to look at the city's eyes,
Like Gieniuchnie in his eyes,
Already this moment, this lovely one
will not be forgotten, will be remembered.

Warsaw is likeable,
Warsaw is likeable,
Happiness can be found here,
Here the heart can be lost.
It is known, capital
And every word is unnecessary.
And in general and in detail
And in all other respects.

I even like it with her
The city of paris has no right to equal,
Because you actually know, “for sale”,
But there isn't, there is no,
Like Warsaw!
Warsaw is likeable,
Warsaw is likeable,
Happiness can be found here,
Here the heart can be lost.

Who will throw a different opinion,
Our head is also calm!
We have an inquiry for that:
Dear sir, what is this speech for?

Warsaw is likeable…

 

Mokotów march

We don't play battle surmas
and the assault drums do not growl
after all these August nights
and flexible arms will suffice!
Let a song flow from the barricades
among the streets, the alleys of the gardens
let him go on a getaway with the boys
arm in arm throughout Mokotów!

This first march, has a strange power
that's how he plays in his chest, until you run out of breath
or the sun's heat, or a cool night
leads us under barrel fire
This first march is the call
let it sound and continue with the roar of guns
the battalion started an assault somewhere
a tear came down and the first shot.

Let the wind carry her to the city
like a torch burning and bloody
let it hang overhead by the stars
can you hear, burning Warsaw?
Let it sound in the streets of your friends
in Aleja, where the lilacs no longer bloom
where houses turned into fortresses
where hearts do not cool down eagerly!

This first march…
Let this first march day by day
trembles in the rustle of trees and in hearts
without big words and unnecessary complaints
it's our blood and someone's tears!
I will go to the Old Town

I will go to the Old Town, I haven't been there since yesterday,
I couldn't sleep at night, if I hadn't gone today.
I see houses in colors, how they ascend to the stars,
and lanterns in the evening make you dream and dream.

Ach, live, to live high
and invite pigeons from the clouds,
lean out of the windows with your beloved
to the Old Town, where joy and peace.
And if not to live, then go
and see, how beautiful it is today.

I have known everything here since I was a child and I loved everything,
on Piwna Street, on Zapiecek, on the Old Market Square too…
When they shine in the gilding, old and famous houses,
I want to watch it close, close to roofs and towers….

Ach, live, to live high…
Do not even ask

I have a blue dream world
For your eyes shine in it
And all heaven
The blue circle of my dreams
This is the world of Warsaw stars
There is night in it and you
There are mists on the Vistula
Someone's sighs
There is a brutal scream
It is a blockbuster whistle
There is no cliche

Do not ask me, is this world beautiful?
You could laugh mockingly,
Don't ask me if I know many girls
This will tear us apart,
Don't ask me what to talk about
Too much at once
What do you want to know again
Ach! Don't say so many words
Don't ask me where my world ends
Maybe behind the glass, maybe among the stars

You found my world
The shadow of the memories faded in my eyes
Stupid dreams
The day was lost in the rain
The first unforgettable day
And then I had enough
You kept showering me with an avalanche of questions
I felt the mockery of them
Your heart beat
I heard a whisper

Do not ask me….