5b4
PAUL NEUBURG
GENERATIONS
"Leave us a lone"
IS
the title of the following poem
by
Tadeusz Rozewicz, the Polish poet born in 1921:
Forget about us
about our generation
live like human beings
forget about us
we envied
plants and stones
we envied dogs
J
u'ould like to be a rat
J
used to say to her
J
would like not to be
J
would like to fall asleep
and wake ujJ after the war
she would say with her eyes shut
forget about us
don't ask about our youth
leave us alone
I
In any articulate society there are, I think , four active generations:
the senior, the central, the recognized and the new .
It
takes about thirt),
years for the two older ones to be replaced by their younger equivalents,
themseh-es llleanwhile being replaced by new-born generations. In East–
ern Europe, the thirty years in question - the last thirty years - have
been momentous.
Those no\\' senior were a lready adu lts when the war started. They
lost relatives and friends, suffered and starved, some barely escaped with
their lives. They sa\\' the destruction of their countries and the death
of se\'en and a quarter million people. After the war, they witnessed
- and some participated in - the destruction of the world in which
they had grown to ad ulthood.
Then central in the working force, this was the generation most
Post-War Polish Poetry,
Ed. and trans. Czeszlaw Milosz (London:
Penguin, 1970 ), p. 78.
