Elegy of a Fallen Son – A Musical Tribute to Lost Youth

This emotionally powerful ballad is inspired by Elegy for a Polish Boy (Elegia o chłopcu polskim), a haunting poem written during World War II by Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński — a young Polish poet and soldier who became a symbol of a lost generation.

Baczyński was only 23 years old when he died in the early days of the Warsaw Uprising in August 1944. The Uprising was a massive act of resistance by the Polish underground against the Nazi German occupation, tragically resulting in the destruction of the city and the death of over 150,000 civilians.

The poem speaks to the pain of a child raised in fear and violence, thrust into war, and ultimately sacrificed.

This original ballad uses piano and guitar to reflect the quiet sorrow and fragile hope carried within Baczyński’s words — a musical tribute to courage, loss, and memory.

Elegy for a Polish Boy

(Translated from Polish)

(Verse 1)
They tore you, little son, from dreams that trembled like a moth,
and stitched your sorrowed eyes with rusty threads of blood.
They painted burning landscapes in yellow seams of fire,
and embroidered drifting seas with trees that bore the hanged.

(Verse 2)
They taught you, little son, to know your land by heart,
its paths you carved with tears of iron and with scars.
They raised you in the darkness, fed you loaves of fear,
you wandered blind through mankind’s most shameful frontier.

(Verse 3)
And you stepped forth, bright-eyed boy, into the night with gun in hand,
and felt how evil bristled in the ticking of each second.
Before you fell, you traced a cross upon your homeland’s soil —
Tell me, was it a bullet, son, or did your heart break open?