‘The Tatras’ was originally published in the periodical Przegląd Zakopiański in 1902. The poem evokes an apocalyptic landscape dominated by the personifi ed Tatras and an emerging community (a rare example of a collective making an appearance in Miciński’s poetry), whose ways leave little room for optimism. The world, destroyed in a global confl agration, is being harried by a vicious Spectre, whose ravages are highlighted by the poem’s rhythmic structure. In spite of the similarities between it and some of Miciński’s best-known verse from the volume W mroku gwiazd (In the Twilight of the Stars) – i.e. the choice of imagery and colours, the infl uence of expres sionism) – ‘The Tatras’ remains a strikingly odd poem. It is that peculiar quality which may have made one of the less popular of Miciński’s poems.