Anatol Biarozka was a young Byelorussian poet whose short-lived burst of creativity came to an abrupt end among the cataclysmic events that engulfed Europe in the early 1940's. He disappeared from the literary scene, and this is a first attempt in nearly half a century to collect some of his writings. His land is Byelorussia (Whiteruthenia), situated between Poland and Russia — a country that remains little known outside its own borders, although it became one of the founding members of the United Nations. Though a vast and mighty state during the Middle Ages, known at that time as the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, it succumbed to conquests by its aggressive and greedy neighbors, and was "crucified at the crossroads of East and West". Presently it survives only as Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, one of the constituent republics of the Soviet Union, where it is engaged in an arduous struggle to preserve its culture, its language and its very identity.