Poland hails Pope's poetry

Poland hails Pope's poetry

The Pope refers to his death in the poetry

The first poetry to be written by Pope John Paul II in nearly a quarter of a century has been published, taking his native Poland by storm.

Roman Triptych, the ailing 82-year-old pontiff's three-part meditation on nature, is just 14 pages but has sold 300,000 copies in advance of publication in his home country.

Described by the Vatican as a "spiritual pilgrimage", the verse touches on the prospect of the Pope's own death.

He makes the reference in part two of the three-part epic, describing the frescoed Sistine Chapel where cardinals gathered to elect him pope in 1978.

He writes: "And so it will be again, when the need arises after my death."

Father Adam Boniecki, a close friend of the pope's and editor-in-chief of Catholic weekly Tygodnik Powszechny, said Poles should see the poem as "the meeting with a man who is about to see God".

'Where are you?'

Czeslaw Milosz, the leading Polish poet and Nobel Prize for literature winner, said: "There are many poets and many poems, but there are few poems of such profoundness.

"It is a conversation between man and God."

The first part, called The Stream, is an ode to nature:

"The undulating wood descends to the rhythm of mountain streams... If you want to find the source, you have to go up, against the current, tear through, seek, don't give up, you know it must be somewhere here. Where are you, source? Where are you, source?!"

The third part is a meditation on the story of Abraham, the Biblical figure honoured by Christianity, Islam and Judaism.

It is set in Ur, Abraham's birthplace, in modern-day Iraq - but there is no reference to the current crisis.

The Pope wrote the poetry in longhand in Polish in the quiet of his lakeside summer residence south of Rome.

It was published first in his native tongue, and has been translated to English, French, Spanish, Italian and German.

The work includes drawings by Michelangelo and two pages of photocopied text in the Pope's handwriting.