WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.670 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.670 --> 00:00:07.210 align:middle line:84% And then, early spring 1947, he writes 00:00:07.210 --> 00:00:10.090 align:middle line:84% a poem called "The Song Of A Bird On The Banks 00:00:10.090 --> 00:00:12.390 align:middle line:90% Of The Potomac." 00:00:12.390 --> 00:00:16.480 align:middle line:90% So it's beginning to-- 00:00:16.480 --> 00:00:19.930 align:middle line:90% when the magnolias bloom-- 00:00:19.930 --> 00:00:23.650 align:middle line:84% I should say, he was very successful. 00:00:23.650 --> 00:00:26.890 align:middle line:84% I mean his appetite for work was really extraordinary. 00:00:26.890 --> 00:00:29.950 align:middle line:84% He was very successful in New York in the consulate. 00:00:29.950 --> 00:00:36.640 align:middle line:84% So he was transferred to the embassy in Washington. 00:00:36.640 --> 00:00:40.630 align:middle line:84% Where he became the cultural attache, 00:00:40.630 --> 00:00:46.540 align:middle line:84% which involved him promoting Polish culture in various ways. 00:00:46.540 --> 00:00:50.260 align:middle line:84% Traveling with textile artists, trying to sell, 00:00:50.260 --> 00:00:52.720 align:middle line:84% create a market for Polish textiles. 00:00:52.720 --> 00:00:56.170 align:middle line:84% Took him to New Mexico, took him to California, 00:00:56.170 --> 00:00:59.590 align:middle line:84% he went to Chicago to try to set up a Polish studies 00:00:59.590 --> 00:01:01.590 align:middle line:90% program at the University. 00:01:01.590 --> 00:01:04.269 align:middle line:84% He got a car and a driver's license. 00:01:04.269 --> 00:01:06.100 align:middle line:90% He's learning. 00:01:06.100 --> 00:01:07.780 align:middle line:90% He and his wife have a child. 00:01:07.780 --> 00:01:10.590 align:middle line:90% 00:01:10.590 --> 00:01:13.800 align:middle line:84% When the magnolias bloom, and the park 00:01:13.800 --> 00:01:17.940 align:middle line:84% is a splash of muddy green, I hear your song 00:01:17.940 --> 00:01:20.940 align:middle line:84% on the banks of Potomac on evenings, lulled 00:01:20.940 --> 00:01:23.850 align:middle line:90% to sleep by cherry petals. 00:01:23.850 --> 00:01:27.570 align:middle line:84% Please pardon the absence of those emotions that 00:01:27.570 --> 00:01:32.580 align:middle line:84% lead one back by force to places in springtimes long forgotten 00:01:32.580 --> 00:01:37.320 align:middle line:84% so that poets might seduce the young with patriotic feeling, 00:01:37.320 --> 00:01:40.290 align:middle line:84% might press the longing heart, coloring 00:01:40.290 --> 00:01:43.620 align:middle line:84% the muddle of childhood and youth in a blur of tears. 00:01:43.620 --> 00:01:46.050 align:middle line:90% I find this unpleasant. 00:01:46.050 --> 00:01:49.680 align:middle line:90% Why should I recall Ponary-- 00:01:49.680 --> 00:01:54.390 align:middle line:84% He grew up in Lithuania, in Vilno. 00:01:54.390 --> 00:02:00.300 align:middle line:84% And the hill where people went hiking, the Catalinas of-- 00:02:00.300 --> 00:02:03.240 align:middle line:90% was Ponary. 00:02:03.240 --> 00:02:07.290 align:middle line:84% Why should I recall Ponary, yellow with young leaves, 00:02:07.290 --> 00:02:11.860 align:middle line:84% with the almond scent of daphne shrubs, the calls of grouse 00:02:11.860 --> 00:02:13.780 align:middle line:90% echoing in the forest? 00:02:13.780 --> 00:02:18.550 align:middle line:84% Why should I enter again the dark halls of King Sigismund 00:02:18.550 --> 00:02:20.230 align:middle line:90% August High School? 00:02:20.230 --> 00:02:22.810 align:middle line:84% Or prod the pines with a great whip 00:02:22.810 --> 00:02:26.260 align:middle line:84% on the road from [? Jany ?],, where Słowacki-- 00:02:26.260 --> 00:02:29.380 align:middle line:90% the Keats of Polish poetry-- 00:02:29.380 --> 00:02:31.690 align:middle line:90% where Słowacki once did? 00:02:31.690 --> 00:02:34.510 align:middle line:84% We played our games on the [? maryjanka ?] 00:02:34.510 --> 00:02:38.050 align:middle line:84% or played we were courtiers of King Vladislaus's hall. 00:02:38.050 --> 00:02:42.160 align:middle line:84% The story of our loves and our partings, or were they the love 00:02:42.160 --> 00:02:44.260 align:middle line:90% songs of the Philomaths? 00:02:44.260 --> 00:02:47.140 align:middle line:84% Philomaths was a student underground club 00:02:47.140 --> 00:02:51.280 align:middle line:84% in favor of romanticism and Polish liberation. 00:02:51.280 --> 00:02:53.320 align:middle line:90% I no longer recall that. 00:02:53.320 --> 00:02:58.690 align:middle line:84% Bird, graceful bird, you who sing to me today 00:02:58.690 --> 00:03:02.620 align:middle line:84% the same song that an Indian hunter must have heard here 00:03:02.620 --> 00:03:05.380 align:middle line:84% standing with his bow on the deer path. 00:03:05.380 --> 00:03:08.860 align:middle line:84% How can you know if the passing of generations 00:03:08.860 --> 00:03:12.970 align:middle line:84% or the succession of forms in the course of a single life, 00:03:12.970 --> 00:03:15.580 align:middle line:84% those traces of my youth were not 00:03:15.580 --> 00:03:19.330 align:middle line:84% effaced by the momentum of the seasons only? 00:03:19.330 --> 00:03:21.790 align:middle line:90% I was witness to misfortunes. 00:03:21.790 --> 00:03:26.350 align:middle line:84% I know what it means to cheat life with the colors of memory. 00:03:26.350 --> 00:03:29.770 align:middle line:84% I listen to your lovely tones with joy. 00:03:29.770 --> 00:03:32.800 align:middle line:84% Here on the great Earth spring is 00:03:32.800 --> 00:03:36.790 align:middle line:90% renewing, our home of a second. 00:03:36.790 --> 00:03:40.420 align:middle line:84% In it, the world's beginnings, so sing. 00:03:40.420 --> 00:03:44.620 align:middle line:84% Shower the dew of song, from the banks of the Potomac, 00:03:44.620 --> 00:03:50.040 align:middle line:84% onto the pearl of these ash gray waters. 00:03:50.040 --> 00:03:52.500 align:middle line:90% Washington, 19. 00:03:52.500 --> 00:03:53.000 align:middle line:90%