There’s a melody in the waves of the sea, / A harmony in the clashing of the elements…

And their gaze is seized with horror. / One can understand their alarm. / The gardens are bursting their walls, / The very structure of the earth is shaken: / They are burying God.

But, friends, I do not wish to die; / I want to live, so I can think, and suffer…

A freedom-sower in a desert realm, / I set out early, before the morning star appeared…

Some of the incredibly haunting final poems of the Hungarian poet Miklos Radnóti.

When I die, I will see beneath the surface of the world. / The other side concealed behind the bird, the mountain, the sunset.

Nothing ever happens twice, / Nor will it. For this reason, / We were born without proficiency, / And will all die without routine.

You ask: Who thus ordains? / The omnipotent God of details, / The omnipotent God of love…

Throw open this dungeon of mine / Give me the brilliant light of day…

Ever since the Eternal Judge / Granted me the omniscience of a prophet, / In the eyes of men I read / Pages of enmity and vice.

It may be that everything has been profaned by centuries of crimes; / It may be that nothing has remained unstained…

The somber Demon, banished from the heights, / Soared aimlessly above the sinful earth…

When your weary consciousness / loses its balance; / when the steps of this staircase / slip from beneath your feet / like a ship’s deck; / when your nocturnal solitude / spits on humanity — you might / meditate on eternity…

Russia will awaken from its sleep, / And upon the ruins of autocracy / They will write our names!

In everything I long to reach / The very essence. / In my toil, in searching for my path, / In my heart’s unrest.

Like a single drop of water fallen in the sea / Is this entire firmament before you. / But what, then, is this universe I see? / And what am I in your regard?

Lithuania! My Homeland! You are like good health: / Only he learns how precious you are / Who has lost you. Today I am able to see — and describe in writing — / Your full beauty, precisely because I miss you.

The centuries pass; war rumbles; / Revolution arises, villages burn…

In a desert land, of stunted, scanty growth, / On soil cracked by sweltering heat, / The Poison Tree — like some menacing sentinel — / Stands — alone in all the universe.

Here’s a taste of Polish poetry: Adam Mickiewicz’s Crimean Sonnets, some of my personal favorites…