My Little Song (II)
by Cyprian Kamil Norwid, translated by Jarek Zawadzki
1500046My Little Song (II)Jarek ZawadzkiCyprian Kamil Norwid


For the country dear where but a crumb of bread
Up from the ground with reverence we heave,
Adoring thus the Boon by Heaven spread…
O Lord I grieve...

And for the land where storks nests to destroy
As a serious misdeed we do perceive,
For they provide us all with mirth and joy…
O Lord I grieve...

And for the country where each greeting nod
Is dear to Him in whom we do believe,
For meeting friends we say: “Praise be to God”…
O Lord I grieve...

But there is also something else I miss,
That’s something different, equally naive;
Though I have no idea where that is...
O Lord I grieve...

And for the griefless time of thoughtlessness,
For those who never fancy to deceive,
And take each no for no and yes for yes...
O Lord I grieve...

And now who cares for me and for my woe
That even time so long may not relieve?
Not for my friendship, but it must be so...
O Lord I grieve...

 This work is a translation and has a separate copyright status to the applicable copyright protections of the original content.

Original:

This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.

Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse

Translation:

This work is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license, which allows free use, distribution, and creation of derivatives, so long as the license is unchanged and clearly noted, and the original author is attributed—and if you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same license as this one.

Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse