Poetry Museum

Poetry and Music are interconnected in a relationship of delighting, crushing, and seething bewilderment    Feliks Kornaski, the Polish Writer, Songwriter and Cabaret Performer, wrote the song Red Poppies on Monte Cassino.  The song is a psalm to the savage violence of World War II.

  

Red poppies on Monte Cassino, | Czerwone maki na Monte Cassino

Instead of dew, drank Polish blood. | Zamiast rosy piły polską krew...

As the soldier crushed them in falling,| Po tych makach szedł żołnierz i ginął,

For the anger was more potent than death.| Lecz od śmierci silniejszy był gniew!

Years will pass and ages will roll, | Przejdą lata i wieki przeminą,

But traces of bygone days will stay, | Pozostaną ślady dawnych dni!..

And the poppies on Monte Cassino | I tylko maki na Monte Cassino

Will be redder having quaffed Polish blood. |Czerwieńsze będą, bo z polskiej wzrosną krwi.

Krysia Jopek, the author of   Maps and Shadows,  introduced me to the beauty of Feliks Kornask. 

Notes on Authors

Stephen King is our Charles Dickens:

"I'd say what I do is like a crack in the mirror. If you go back from the books from Carrie on up, what you see is an observation of ordinary middle-class American life as it's lived at the time and that particular book was written. In every life you get a point where you have to deal with something that's inexplicable to you, whether it's the doctor saying you have cancer or a prank phone call. So whether you talk about ghosts or vampires or Nazi war criminals living down the block, we're talking about the same thing, which is an intrusion of the extraordinary into ordinary life and how we deal with it. What this shows about our character and our interactions with others and the society we life in interests me a lot more than monsters and vampires, and ghouls and ghosts." Stephen King in an Interview to the Paris Review