Work · Michał P. Dybowski · July 2026
A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.
Proverbs 17:17
A sister song to the Hymn of the Mocked — a Just Council diptych: there the song of building, here the song of reconciliation. Metre: trochaic octosyllable. Rhyme: abab. Four verses with a refrain.
Verse IEasy to love when days are fair,
easy to cheer when all goes well.
The wind will come — the easy crowd
will vanish. In hardship a brother stays.
RefrainI will not leave you on your own —
with you I’ll cross the great waters.
In trial you will know your brother:
for out of trials nations are born.
Verse IIWhen the great flood began to rise,
strangers stood there hand in hand.
The sandbag passed — and concord with it:
a brother was born for that ordeal.
RefrainI will not leave you on your own —
with you I’ll cross the great waters.
In trial you will know your brother:
for out of trials nations are born.
Verse IIIDiscord has sat down at our table,
brother looks on brother from afar.
Yet the wafer passes round the circle —
white, broken by the hand, it saves.
RefrainI will not leave you on your own —
with you I’ll cross the great waters.
In trial you will know your brother:
for out of trials nations are born.
Verse IVConcord does not rise from decrees,
nor from the rostrum, nor applause —
but when brother stands by brother
on the flood banks, amid night and sand.
Final refrainI will not leave you on your own —
with you I’ll cross the great waters.
In trial you will know your brother:
from hands like these do nations rise.
Performance note
Diptych. The song shares its metre and architecture with the Hymn of the Mocked — trochaic octosyllable, four verses, a refrain, a word exchanged in the final refrain. They may be sung to the same or a related melody, as a pair: the song of building and the song of reconciliation.
The refrain as the thesis of the verse. The first two lines are the friend — faithfulness at all times, “I will not leave” — and the brother who steps into the burden: “I will cross with you”. “Great waters” carry a double meaning: the image of the flood and an echo of Song of Songs 8:7, where great waters cannot quench love.
Images. The second verse takes Proverbs literally, from Polish experience: the flood banks, the chain of strangers’ hands, the sandbag as a sacrament of concord. The third verse personifies discord as an uninvited guest at the table, and sets the opłatek, the Christmas wafer, as the most Polish ritual of reconciliation, legible across worldviews. The fourth verse carries the doctrinal core and returns to the flood banks, closing the circle. The final refrain exchanges “are born” for “rise” — and hands the song over to the hands held out.
