[...]

Consciousness
Eszmélet

1.

The dawn dissevers earth and skies
and at its pure and lovely bidding
the children and the dragonflies
twirl out into the sunworld's budding;
no vapor dims the air's receding,
a twinkling lightness buoys the eyes!
Last night into their trees were gliding
the leaves, like tiny butterflies.

2.

Blue, yellow, red, they flocked my dream,
smudged images the mind had taken,
I felt the cosmic order gleam--
and not a speck of dust was shaken.
My dream's a floating shade; I waken;
order is but an iron regime.
By day, the moon's my body's beacon,
by night, an inner sun will burn.

3.

I'm gaunt, sometimes bread's all I touch,
I seek amid this trivial chatter
unrecompensed, and yearn to clutch,
what has more truth than dice, more matter.
No roast rib warms my mouth and platter,
no child my heart, forgoing such--
the cat can't both, how deft a ratter,
inside and outside make her catch.

4.

Just like split firewood stacked together,
the universe embraces all,
so that each object holds the other
confined by pressures mutual,
all things ordained, reciprocal.
Only unbeing can branch and feather,
only becoming blooms at all;
what is must break, or fade, or wither.

5.

Down by the branched marshaling-yard
I lurked behind a root, fear-stricken,
of silence was the living shard,
I tasted grey and wierd-sweet lichen.
I saw a shadow leap and thicken:
it was the shadow of the guard--
did he suspect?--watched his shade quicken
upon the heaped coal dew-bestarred.

6.

Inside there is a world of pain,
outside is only explanation.
The world's your scab, the outer stain,
your soul's the fever-inflammation.
Jailed by your heart's own insurrection,
you're only free when you refrain,
nor build so fine a habitation,
the landlord takes it back again.

7.

I stared from underneath the evening
into the cogwheel of the sky--
the loom of all the past was weaving
law from those glimmery threads, and I
looked up again into the sky
from underneath the steams of dreaming
and saw that always, by and by,
the weft of law is torn, unseaming.

8.

Silence gave ear: the clock struck one.
Maybe you could go back to boydom;
walled in with concrete dank and wan,
maybe imagine hints of freedom.
And now I stand, and through the sky-dome
the stars, the Dippers, shine and burn
like bars, the sign of jail and thraldom,
above a silent cell of stone.

9.

I've heard the crying of the steel,
I've heard the laugh of rain, its pattern;
I've seen the past burst through its seal:
only illusions are forgotten,
for naught but love was I begotten,
bent, though, beneath my burdens' wheel--
why must we forge such weapons, flatten
the gold awareness of the real?

10.

He only is a man, who knows
there is no mother and no father,
that death is only what he owes
and life's a bonus altogether,
returns his find to its bequeather,
holding it only till he goes;
nor to himself, nor to another,
takes on a god's or pastor's pose.

11.

I've seen what they call happiness:
soft, blonde, it weighed two hundred kilos;
it waddled smiling on the grass,
its tail a curl between two pillows.
Its lukewarm puddle glowed with yellows,
it blinked and grunted at me--yes,
I still remember where it wallows,
touched by the dawns of blissfulness.

12.

I live beside the tracks, where I
can see the trains pass through the station.
I see the brilliant windows fly
in floating dark and dim privation.
Through the eternal night's negation
just so the lit-up days rush by;
in all the cars' illumination,
silent, resting my elbow, I.
(1934)

That Which Your Heart Disguises
Amit szívedbe rejtesz

For the eightieth birthday of Freud

That which your heart disguises
open your eyes and see;
that which your eye surmises
let your heart wait to be.

Desire--and all concede it--
kills all who are not dead.
But happiness, you need it
as you need daily bread.

Children, all of the living
yearn for our mother's arms;
lovemaking, or death-giving,
to wed's to take up arms.

Be like the Man of Eighty,
hunted by men with guns,
who bleeds, but in his beauty
still sires a million sons.

That old thorn, broken piercing
your sole, is long since drawn.
Now from your heart's releasing
death, too, falls and is gone.

That which your eye surmises
seize with your hand and will;
that which your heart disguises
is yours to kiss or kill.
(1936)

[...]

And So I've Found
My Native Country...
Íme, hát megleltem hazámat

And so I've found my native country,
that soil the gravedigger will frame,
where they who write the words above me
do not for once misspell my name.

This black collection-box receives me
(for no one needs me any more),
this Iron Six that was worth twenty,
this coin left over from the war.

None needs that iron ring inscripted
with sweet words, that the world is new:
rights, land.--Our laws are the leftovers;
now pretty gold rings all pursue.

For many years I had been lonely.
Then many people visited.
I'd have been happy if they'd stayed.
You are alone, was what they said.

And so I lived, useless and empty,
and now I see it all quite plain.
They let me play the fool until
by now even my death's in vain.

All through my life I've tried to weather
the whirlwind that would always blow.
I was more sinned against than sinning,
and it's a laugh that it was so.

Spring, summer, autumn, all are lovely;
but winter's loveliest for one
who hopes for hearth and home and family
only for others, when all's done.
(1937)