AustLit

A poem responding to the funeral of major 20th century Polish poet Kazimierz Wierzyński, who died in London in 1969. Wierzyński escaped Nazi-occupied Poland at the outbreak of World War II, fleeing through France and Portugal and settling in the United States in 1941, where he lived until 1964, when he returned to Europe. The pain of exile from Poland is a significant theme of his postwar poetry. Marek's poem expresses grief over Wierzyński's death, and some identification with his experiences in exile, yet at the same time some apparent ambivalence over his poetry.