Back to Index

Curse of a Rich Polish Peasant on His Sister Who Ran Away With a Wild Man

by Carl Sandburg, 1920

Feliksowa has gone again from our house and this time for good, I hope.
 She and her husband took with them the cow father gave them, and they sold it.
 She went like a swine, because she called neither on me, her brother, nor on her father, before leaving for those forests.
 That is where she ought to live, with bears, not with men.
 She was something of an ape before and there, with her wild husband, she became altogether an ape.
 No honest person would have done as they did.
 Whose fault is it? And how much they have cursed me and their father!
 May God not punish them for it. They think only about money; they let the church go if they can only live fat on their money.

Published in Smoke and Steel
Tags:

Any corrections or public domain poems I should have here? Email me at poems (at) this domain.