Night on City's Edge
Külvárosi éj
Hoisting its net up from inside
the walled-in yard of the housing block,
and like a ditch at water's bottom,
our kitchen slowly fills with dark.
Silence. A scrubbing brush appears
to find unskilful feet and crawl.
A piece of plaster hanging near
is wondering whether or not to fall.
The night, with oily rags to wear,
is hovering in the sky.
It sits at city's edge. It sighs,
it flits across the concrete square,
and lights a moon to make it flare.
Like stacks of rubble roughly strewn,
factories loom.
Nonetheless,
it's inside these a denser dark's compressed:
the base plate of this silence.
And on the windows of textile mills
in loose bundles
the moon's rays fall.
The moon's soft light becomes a fiber,
stretched on the ribs of weaving frames.
Into the night, while work stands still,
the weaver-women's shapeless dreams
get woven by these sad machines.
And farther on, like arched cemeteries,
foundry, cement factory, screw factory
are echo-laden family crypts.
These places of production keep
rebirth's dark secret to themselves.
A cat is scratching at a fence,
and beetle-backed dynamos
send light-signals, give night-frights, to
the superstitious watchman,
as they glisten cold.
A train whistles.
The dampness fumbles around the evening-
pervades bent trees and makes them heavy,
clogging the traffic dust
trapped in their leafage.
A cop and a drunk labourer do their rounds,
and some comrade with pamphlets to read
sneaks across.
Sniffs his way forward like a dog,
with catlike ear inclining back,
dodging the streetlights, zig and zag.
The tavern's mouth spews tainted light,
its open window vomits, splashing.
A choked-up lamp swings round inside.
One worker's on an all-night session.
He bares his teeth against the walls-
the tavern owner long since snoozing-
fills up the stairwell with his wails,
and weeps. And hymns the revolution.
The river is like ore cooled off.
They clatter, they lie stiff.
That roaming wind's a homeless dog-
prods the water with big loose tongue,
and laps the water up.
Like drifting rafts, straw sleeping-sacks
swim down this silent stream, this night.
The warehouse is a stranded boat.
The foundry is an iron barge.
Its worker dreams the molds have forged
a smolten baby, red and hot.
Everything's damp, everything's heavy,
sketched over with designs of mildew
that map the lands of misery.
And off there, in the barren meadow,
ragged grass. Cast-off rags. And paper
which would so love to crawl! It stirs,
but has no strength to start.
Your gusty wind, all damp and clinging,
echoes through dirty washing swinging-
night!
You're hanging from the sky like cambric
hang loose from rope, like human grief
hangs from life. Night!
Night of the poor! Be my coal,
smoulder and smoke within my soul,
find iron in me, melt it down,
fashion an anvil hard as stone,
a hammer spitting sparks of metal,
a swift blade that will win the battle,
night!
The night's a joyless, heavy load.
So, brothers, now I too will rest.
May grief and pain not crush our soul.
May vermin not consume our flesh.
(1932)
Translated by David Hill
Reckoning
Számvetés
I've dined on rancid filth, on rot,
swallowed dung-water and drunk piss;
no man could be more rash than this.
But so far, happiness is not my lot.
Not one moment of mine was noble
in this world contrite, redeemed,
none warm, sweet, or pleasant seemed
as a pig would find in a puddle.
Morality teaches me to be
sneaky, as you do too, my dear.
I 've been hungering twenty-eight years.
Only a weapon now can harm me.
That is why my heart 's oppressed
by such dark powers, my love 's tender face
shows anguish when she sees my gaze
- even my smile causes distress.
(1933)
Translated by Daniel Hoffman
You Made Me Be a Child Again
Gyermekké tettél
You made me be a child again.
Through thirty winters' biting pain I grew.
I can't sit still, I try to walk in vain.
My legs keep dragging, pushing me toward you.
You're in my mouth as a dog carries its pup
and so as not to choke on you, I'd flee.
The years that wrecked my destiny rise up
at every moment and sweep over me.
Look, I'm starving - feed me! Cover me,
I'm cold. A stupid fool, give me your care.
Like draft in a house your absence goes through me.
Say it, say that I'll be free of fear.
You listened, and by silence my tongue was seized.
All memory vanished when I felt your gaze.
Make me be no longer unappeased
so I can die, or, alone, live out my days.
My mother threw me out - I lay on the sill,
stone below me, emptiness above.
I would have crept into myself, impossible.
O how I long for sleep! Let me in, my love.
There are many men like me, unfeeling,
from whose eyes nonetheless tears flow.
My love for you makes possible my healing
so I can love myself as well as you.
(1936)
Translated by Daniel Hoffman
So Finally Now I Have my Home
Íme, hát megleltem hazámat
So finally now I have my home,
that place where they have learned to spell
my name, and write it on my grave -
with luck, they'll bury me as well.
Earth will accept me like an old tin,
sad but true, and perfectly fit:
nobody values last war's coin,
that bent tin dime, the farthing bit.
Nor iron rings engraved with such words
as new world, legal rights or land,
our laws are still the laws of war:
people prefer a golden band.
I was alone for a long long time,
then whole crowds descended on me.
You're on your own, they said, although
I'd gladly have kept company.
My very existence was in vain
I now conclude, since I was led
up the garden path all along
and will be useless still when dead.
Throughout my life I have tried to stand
firm in the whirlwind. What a laugh
I didn't sin more than was sinned against: do please
include that in my epitaph.
Spring, summer, fall are all pretty good,
but winter gets ten out of ten
from one whose last remaining hope
is hearth and home for other men.
(1937)
Translated by George Szirtes
