Lajos Kassák

...

Now I heard time neighing I mean it parrotishly spread its wings
        I say gapingwide red gate
with my lover black diamonds bricked into her face and
        trailing 3 children
in desperation
we sat under factory chimneys
we knew tomorrow the winding lines
ho zhoop ho zhoop
and she said my Kashi I know you're going off and for me it's
        shrivelling on the dais and modelling for mister nadler's
        cacocanvases
what else
what else
the lord god lets pretty women slip out of his mind
already the demichrist the woodcarver is here
young reeking with truth not to be put down
tomorrow we'll be over the hungarian border
well yes h'm yes
what else what else
the city flew past
squirmed to and fro and then reared up
I saw my father's crumpled straw hat floating over the chemist's
        frosted glass
to the holy trinity statue and back
ah well the old man dreamed I'd be a chaplain at 21 in the
        parish of érsekújvár
but just ten years earlier I fed on smoke in the workshop of
        mister sporni the locksmith
and now the old man very seldom came home to us
and soon my well-planned future was soaked in and pissed out
        with his beer
he fell in love with an old cleaner
his hair dropped out he had no friends but gypsies
25 April 1909
I was ready to walk to Paris with the woodcarver
the hick town squatted in its puddle and squeezed its accordeon
on saint Christopher I must take my sings off you you will
        never be your father's son
a drunk sobbed crocodile tears
as I propped up the wall of the Golden Lion inn
I felt everything was at an end
a red railway-track ran through me and bells rang in the towers
pigeons tumbled above the roofs
no they galloped with the suncart
the new franciscan bell just about sang
he who prepared for sleep should brighten up the lead bars
the hours are spectres on white sheepdogs
I felt everything was at an end
vintners and haberdashers shut up shop
good friend go back to your children go back now
the wheels have stopped turning back
man casts his milk-teeth and stares into the emptiness where life
        devours its own tail
into the emptiness
oh jiramari
oh lebli
oh BOom BOomm
but the ship bobbed us along like a pregnant woman
and behind us there was at least someone manoeuvring the
        scenes into place
this was the first slashed-across day in my life
torches and bottomless pits flickered inside me
papagallum
oh fumigo
papagallum
coppery birds crowed in bands of twenty on the bank
the hanged were swaying from the trees and crowing too
now and again we got glances from the brooding corpses
        in the river-bed
but we were 21
the woodcarver's chin sprouted an ugly frizz of pink
        bristles
otherwise we lived all right
but for the diagonal of our bellies
it was useless though we tightened the screws the oxen
        made off again and again into the stubble-fields
and it was all we could do the scrape our eyes off girls'
        ankles
at times like these I always gave vent to cries like
        cymbals
Vienna saw us sleeping rough 3 days
then finally we wrenched ourselves out of ourselves what
        is civilization after all
you smear yourself with a glaze of enamel and start
        shuddering
at the lice
well what are family ties
you eke out your umbilical cord with silk ribbon
well what's the worship of god
you take on fear to get shot of fear
we nailed the highways to our soles and the sun was with
        us in space on his golden seven-league-feet
believe me the elephant is not bigger than the flea
red is not redder than white
and if we really went, we went
ahead only on kamaralogos if we set up the scales when
        were we ever better off
and then our eyes were opened
and soon we were deep like the black wells in mining
        country and so we continued
13 angels walked ahead of us
on foot too
and sang for us about our youth
we were already well-tried tramps with tame fleas in
        our armpits
we enjoyed fruit from the roadside ditch
sour milk
and jewish community funds
and we had brothers round us oh from everywhere
wonderful skins like brick a world's languages on their
        lips
each had his special smell
and some had been planed to the bone by kilometers and
        others came with milky mouths from their mother's breast
the roads lay under us in white quilts
the telegraph-wires jerked tight and wrote
        mantras on the sky
at night we glimpsed the flowers blooming between women's legs
but we were vegetarians and misogynists
and dragged ourselves through Passau
Aachen
Antwerp

Edwin Morgan
(b. 1920), since 2004 the Scots Makar, or Poet Laureate of Scotland, has translated poetry from many language including more than two dozen poems by
Lajos Kassák
(1887-1967) the important writer, painter, critic, editor and theorist of the avant-garde. For his services to Hungarian literature Edwin Morgan has been decorated by the Hungarian government and awarded the Hungarian PEN Club's Gold Medal.