Foreword / Introduction
Today is National Independence Day here in Poland. It’s been 107 years since Poland got its independence back, after 123 years of being split up by Russia, Prussia, and Austria. It’s a good reminder that freedom isn’t just automatic—people had to fight for it. As a Polish boy, I feel proud to grow up in a free and independent Poland.
Poem: Listopad: Polska’s Heartbeat [free-verse]
The eleventh of November, streets flooded red and white,
flags whipping in cold wind like battle scars that finally healed.
People march past buildings that remember when their walls
were riddled with bullet holes, when silence was the only safe language.
Warsaw’s cobblestones still hold the ghosts of 1918—
the moment Poland stopped being a ghost story.
One hundred twenty-three years the map erased us,
Russia, Prussia, Austria slicing Poland into thirds
like we were meat to carve, like nations could just vanish.
But you can’t kill a language when grandmothers whisper it to babies,
when mothers bake bread the old way, when fathers teach songs
that empires tried to bury beneath propaganda and fear.
Jeszcze Polska nie zginęła—Poland hasn’t died yet.
The anthem isn’t hopeful, it’s defiant,
a fist raised against the darkness, a refusal to disappear.
Every syllable is proof that you can’t erase a people
just by drawing new lines on maps,
just by trying to drown their voice.
Piłsudski walked out of Magdeburg prison on the tenth
like resurrection, like something impossible made flesh.
The city knew before he spoke—
this man who had spent his whole life refusing to cooperate with empires,
this stubborn fire that wouldn’t go out.
The next day, Poland became real again.
The Regency Council handed him the country
with shaking hands, like passing a newborn to someone you trust,
something fragile, and fierce, and worth dying for.
People flooded the streets crying, laughing, not believing—
Polska, Polska, Polska—
a word that tasted like freedom after a century of ash.
Za wolność naszą i waszą—for our freedom and yours.
That phrase runs through Polish blood like iron,
the understanding that when you fight for yourself
you’re also fighting for everyone crushed under the same boot.
Ukraine bleeds now under Russian tanks, fighting the same empire
that carved up Poland. Some wars never really end, they just change faces.
Solidarity in 1980 was ten million people saying NO
without firing a shot, without spilling blood.
Just bodies refusing to move, refusing to cooperate,
refusing to pretend the regime was acceptable.
That’s Polish DNA—stubborn as winter, stubborn as stone,
the kind of resistance that outlasts armies.
There is something about surviving erasure
that changes how you see the world.
When your country gets deleted for over a century
and comes back anyway, you learn that empires are temporary
but people—people are stubborn, people remember,
people keep language alive in kitchens and prayers and songs.
Today the flags wave in Szczecin, in Warsaw, in Kraków,
red and white like wounds that became symbols,
like blood and bone, like sacrifice and hope.
Children who never knew occupation still feel it in their bones,
the weight of being Polish, of coming from something
that refused to stay dead.
The eleventh of November isn’t just history trapped in textbooks,
it’s the proof that impossible things can happen,
that nations can rise from graves empires dug,
that you can steal a people’s land but not their soul,
that some things are too stubborn to kill—
and Poland is one of them.
The churches ring their bells today,
the same bells that rang in 1918 when disbelief turned to joy.
Candles flicker in windows for the dead who never saw this day,
for everyone who died believing Poland would return,
for the partisans, and rebels, and ordinary people
who kept the name alive when the world said it was finished.
Bóg, Honor, Ojczyzna—God, Honour, Fatherland—
words carved into monuments, into hearts, into history.
But really it’s simpler than that:
it’s the refusal to disappear,
the decision that your existence matters even when empires say it doesn’t,
the stubborn, relentless insistence on being alive.
So here is to Poland on the eleventh of November,
here is to every person who survived erasure,
here is to the language that lived in secret,
here is to the country that came back from the dead—
niech żyje Polska—let Poland live,
let it stand, let it breathe, let it never forget what it cost to exist.
