1
What have you done to Athens, Socrates,
That people gave you a golden statue,1
Poisoning you first? . . .
What have you done to Italy, Alighieri,
That two graves 2 were dug for you by hypocrites,
Banishing you first? . . .
What have you done to Europe, oh, Columbus,
That she dug three graves for you in three places,3
Shackling you first? . . .
What have you done to your people, Camões,
That grave diggers disturbed your grave twice,4
Starving you first? . . .
What crimes, Kościuszko, did you commit ’gainst the world,
That it tramps upon your tombstones in two different places,5
Rendering you homeless first? . . .
What have you, Napoléon, done to the world,
That they locked you in two tombs6 upon your death,
Locking you up first? . . .
What have you, Mickiewicz, done to your people? . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2
The kind of urn counts little, where you’re laid to rest,
Where? when? with what visage, in what sense?
For they’ll open your grave a second time,
Proclaim your merits in a different way,
Ashamed today of tears shed yesterday;
Those not seeing the human in you
Will now shed tears to the power of two . . .
3
Each one, like you, the world cannot
Admit right away to a peaceful plot
Nor, old as it is, did it ever,
For clay unto clay seeps unceasing,
While opposing bodies are nailed together
Later . . . or sooner . . .
I wrote this in Paris in January 1856.
1 Some time after Socrates’ death, Athenians raised for him a statue of gold. [This and the
following annotations are the poet’s.]
2 Dante is buried in Ravenna and in Florence.
3 Christopher Columbus is buried in Spain, in Santo Domingo, and in Havana.
4 Four years ago a place was searched in a communal cemetery where a one-eyed, legless
beggar had been buried, to bury Camões there.
5 Kościuszko lies in Solothurn and in Kraków.
6 There was recently a funeral for Napoléon.