Gyula Illyés (1902 - 1983)

POEMS

Árpád

Here's a mound these folk had hardly ever spied
and now rocks and crags to the sky uplifting!
October ends with rain, with snowfalls' dusting;
the frightened horses' hooves on ice - clods slide.

And there's no road! No path, only a pall
of slush in the gorges, of footprints no token.
On the creek - bed's rocks and stones wheels are broken;
accustomed to flat land, the oxen fall.

And yet they must run, onward at any cost!
Forward! Upward! That way, whatever legions
await them there - yesterday, seeking vengeance,
Bulgars, and mounted Pecheniegs in a host.

But few prattling women, few gabbling mouths.
Revenge was merciless - no elders, either.
Everything that binds a people together
- judges, seers, priests, altars - all had been lost.

A troop of orphaned striplings, widowed men.
One mourning his wife, another mourns mother.
Is this, is this what the Hungarians were?
It was thus they conquered the highest mountain.

And it was there they were struck by the worst
of troubles - no view, from there, but the horror
of one step into mist - cloaked vales, their future.
They left their dead lying on the bare earth.

For it wasn't possible there to pause.
A nation? Better to let each and every
one run with his own ill fate separately.
Ukko won't so wildly level his blows,

unless he strikes a mass, a tribe he'd kill.
"Let fly apart, like a tree split by godflame,
descendants of all with King Attila's name!"
And so with this did their hearts and brains fill.

Look, even the chief - why is he tongue - tied?
So Árpád was. His dragging feet prevented
his dwarf stallion's stumble that would have ended
in a fall down the jagged steep mountainside.

What was his duty but to think ahead -
What was in his thoughts, as closing his slanting
wildcat eyes, he for the moment stood, wanting
to see in his mind where his future led?

If here he made fearful battle begin
maybe then they'd return to the diurnal
world they knew, those who could, in the eternal
yoke, most wretched when pinioned by their kin.

But should they prevail, what then will become
of this folk among strangers, widowed, orphaned?
In but a single generation, fortune
will have made strangers of themselves to them.

There may be a new home, and a new wife -
she'll be her husband's, but she'll bear a mixture,
child with alien face, a stranger's stature,
his father's strain not mingled in new life.

From kisses, as it were, that breathe on it
of the Slavic mothers, German or Latin,
the child will lose the skin's yellow - gold satin,
and lovely lynx - eyes' corners will be flat.

The better the new wives, deeper becomes
the cemetery where the glittering sun
of Mongolian smiles, eye - flames of the Hun
dwindle and perish in alien wombs,

as do the signs that warm hearts and ascribe,
over and over as each child resurrects
its father long dead, the blood - line that projects
eternal life's promise unto the tribe.

And why should we live so, stripped to the heart,
discarding our souls, discarding our bodies? -
For those born in his image the old god is
still ready to help - what then, is our part?
It's this troubled him, nor could be expressed
in mere words, until pierced by inspiration
Árpád knew, in changed blood and soul his nation
would find what it is makes life worthwhile and blessed.

"Whatever happens" - he still said no word -
"at least we'll be free" - perhaps this defined
what he felt in his heart, more than in his mind,
while in stirrups his dwarf stallion he spurred,

then stepped out of their ranks, mounted a steep
rise where, with fulfillment aglow in his eyes,
he watched, a shepherd who knows each of his sheep,
as his people now poured into Europe.

1953

Translated by Daniel Hoffman

Refuge

Menedék

In vain you soothe and comfort me
with "You must simply bear it: you'll be fine".
I am ill, and you would not dare fool me
with vowing "You'll get over it in time".
I have a mortal sickness, one I caught
neither yesterday nor the day before,
and there's no way to get on top of it
for, though it makes me groan and leaves me sore,
it is inherited. There is no drug
to ease the tremendous pain, it is too great.
(Well in advance the doctors
have left all the sufferers to their fate.)
There is no remedy that can drive out
this nightmare, even for a day or so;
you must face up to it and acquiesce
and lose - there's nothing else for you to do.

For this same ancient malady is age.
I display its symptoms, all so terrible
that, in alarm at them, I almost fear
to look into the mirror on the wall.
This must be how a person feels when cancer
paints the features yellow, or when the brow
is branded with the ulcerating sentence
of syphilis; for now
the end may come any time. I see myself
in just this way - and so you must see me.
Every life after 50 is a slow,
or a quick, agony.

You will not make me any stronger
by turning my eyes and head
away from prospects I perhaps no longer
look on with such dread.
Let me, without fearfulness, take a look
at the end I won't be able to avoid.
It is for this that you, my sweet consoler,
must use the wisdom of your womanhood.
And when the last hound, destiny,
in at the kill, takes me by surprise,
I should retreat, not even glancing back,
as long ago between my mother's knees.
I should be able, as in that lovely poem...
te spectem (listen now) suprema mihi
cum venerit hora - "when my final hour
has called me to depart" - then I should be
"able to raise my eyes to you" and - te
teneam moriens deficiente manu
(those ancient verses) - "in my falling hand
hold yours". Oh come and rescue...

For you who are above us like the angels,
you women, it is you alone know how
to treat the hero, when he is besmirched
with blood, as if he were still a small boy,
and because death and love must share a bed
and, in whatever way we make an end,
death strips us naked, while
humiliating us to leave us stained,
and as for a long time what is my secret
has been quite plain to you,
with motherly patience, in the final shame
of my annihilation, help me through.

1956

Translated by Clive Wilmer & George Gömöri