Sándor Rákos
Poems
Translated by David Hill

Four Apocryphals Still still inside of its egg the world was forcing open its shell casing one was just poised to become all through endlessness of times and spaces still life had not yet been caught out by angles tossed into dead nothing still even light did not exist in blind dark Negation was squatting Already already on the present’s stem future and past branches had sprouted already heaven’s and hell’s sovereigns on their conceited thrones sat proudly already light had shot through space across spaces down every age already the unrevealable had been revealing but not Grace There there teeth will crunch and grind on teeth hands will be wrung with crack of knuckles there we must take heed of all things with which till then we had not reckoned there we will earnestly regret we came to the world to perdition there blinding lamps will glare on us in a timeless interrogation there we must answer everything the deaf will hear the dumb will holler there a great press will squeeze our spirits anathema’s unearthly horror And and up they rumbled hosts of troops and up it rushed the ocean’s foam-tide and off trooped the defeated troops and ebb tide caved up over flow-tide and then the endless was complete and had no end and no beginning and from one piece you’d know the suite and when it started it continued and off trooped the defeated troops and ebb tide caved up over flow-tide and up they rumbled all the troopers and up it rushed the ocean’s foam-tide and

---

David Hill’s
first collection, Angels and Astronauts, was published last year by the National Poetry Foundation (U.K.)