Work · Michał P. Dybowski · July 2026
Nine four-line stanzas with a refrain, free verse with a hymnic cadence. The historical arc runs from the Partitions, through the year 1920, Gdynia and the cellars of 1944, to Solidarity and the present day.
I.They laughed in three capitals as her land was carved apart,
that a nation wiped from the map is a footnote for cartographers.
Yet she endured in silence — in a lullaby, in a prayer,
in a copybook where a child by night traced Polish words.
II.They laughed in the year twenty: “a state for a single summer,
a seasonal republic — it will wilt before the first snow.”
August gave them answer with thunder at the gates of Warsaw,
and the maps were drawn anew — this time with a trembling hand.
RefrainAre they laughing still? Then let them —
laughter is short, and Poland long.
Whoever builds does not hear it:
the hammer drowns out every jeer.
III.They laughed at a fishing village: “A port? Them? From sand and wind?”
Yet within a dozen springs she raised a city from the dune
and sent ships out into the world beneath the white-and-red ensign —
for greatness does not answer scoffers. Greatness builds.
IV.They laughed that she was trampled — yet in the cellars of Warsaw
by candlelight she stitched up wounds, with a scalpel cut the darkness.
There was no power and no tomorrow — there was a surgeon and a nurse,
and a stubbornness that at times is holier than many a victory.
V.They laughed at ten million: “With a strike? Against tanks? With a psalm?”
Yet without a single shot they moved the Iron Curtain —
and laughter froze in the throats of empires when the shipyard spoke in a whisper
what all the cannon of the world had never managed to cry out.
VI.Today the laughter comes from near at hand — the hardest is to laugh at ourselves:
at the queues, at the endless quarrels, at the concord that eludes us.
But whoever mocks his own wounds has not yet dressed them —
and we know about wounds as few others do on this earth.
RefrainAre they laughing still? Then let them —
laughter is short, and Poland long.
Whoever builds does not hear it:
the hammer drowns out every jeer.
VII.For laughter is a tax the small pay the great in advance,
and scorn — a prophecy read backwards.
No one, after all, mocks the dead. Mockery is a fearful bow
made to that which is growing — before it grows too great.
VIII.So let them laugh, and welcome — today we have work to do:
the doctor at the table, the teacher at the chalk, the engineer at the plans,
the entrepreneur who kept his word, the official who in a case number
saw a human face — it is they who go on writing this hymn.
IX.And when we have finished building and that quiet hour comes,
we shall lay a table in the courtyard — before those who scoffed.
And there will be no triumph in it: there will be bread, and there will be room.
This is how the mocked one wins — by inviting laughter to the table.
Final refrainThey laugh no longer? No matter.
Laughter was short. Poland — long.
Someone today lays the first brick.
The hymn goes on — in his hand.
Performance note
Form: nine four-line stanzas with a refrain, free verse with a hymnic cadence. Historical arc: the Partitions, 1920, Gdynia, 1944, Solidarity, the present day, the turn towards ourselves, the builders, the table. The finale is deliberately stripped of triumphalism — the mocked one prevails through hospitality, not revenge. A version shortened for communal singing is to be found in the song version.
