A message on a stone for a city lost forever

Zbigniew Herbert was born in Lwów, a city that was to prove a turning point in his life. Part of the Habsburg empire since 1772, the city was part of newly independent Poland by the time of the poet's birth in 1924. However, it was lost again when the Germans and the Soviets invaded in 1941. The poet, forced to resume studies in secret in Kraków, found the city that he loved and that he had been forced to abandon, to be lost, but not forever. After the war, Lwów became part of Soviet Ukraine, cutting off Herbert from his beloved city. Yet, the city that he longed for did not disappear entirely from his memory.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons