György Rába

Poems

Translated by Daniel Hoffman

 

The Sirens
A szirének

They fade away and I'm aware
on weekdays a few hours of holiday
they were the sirens so even now
I should be glad that one of them
in the metro humming in my ear
gilded her singing to a romance
afterwards the other leaned
toward me over a quarter-pound
of Russian salad a gentle lamb
it's slander that they end in fishtails
below the waist I gained admittance
to Eden they didn't pull me onto shoals
or into whirlpools remembering this
is a red-letter day now when
the horizon's landless then I long
to hear again the sirens' song

The Dryad
A driád

The dryad known from myths I chased
like one who moves under a spell
shining through the foliage I saw
her in the gently sloping hill
I sought her lest she change into
a tree or fallen leaves, her human
body breathless as I threw her
down while she had the shape of woman
I breathed the scent of cinnamon
from her skin for then she fed
my hunger tales of flesh about
the endless presence of her breed
although she slipped right through my fingers
again she hovers there before me
as her cinnamon-scent still lingers
but she glitters a tender shoot
with the frailty of budding life
I run to embrace her and protect
her ripe wheat-locks from harvesters' knife
I caught her melting in thin air
her mirage transformed into spring flame
in the flamboyance of her new spell
I could but follow another change
though by then weakened I was and weary
still gasping I kept on my quest
of scent and sight the hunt became
imprinted deep within my breast
for she doesn't matter the dryad can
a hundred different shapes acquire
from within my self I still can hear
her charmed voice singing of desire

 

György Rába
is a poet and essayist. He worked for a while as a secondary school teacher of literature, then spent 27 years as a research fellow at the Institute of Literary History of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and is now retired. He has published a dozen volumes of poems and five collections of studies and essays on literature.