E-mail: Password: Forgot your password?Signup

18 May 2020

A NATION DISMEMBERED – Selected Poetry from the Anthology edited by CSILLA BERTHA and GYULA KODOLÁNYI – Part III

 

 

A NATION DISMEMBERED

Selected Poetry from the Antology edited by Csilla Bertha and Gyula Kodolányi1

Part III


 

SÁNDOR KÁNYÁDI

BEHIND GOD’S BACK

Isten háta mögött

 

empty mangers empty stalls

christmas here no longer calls

no use waiting for

the wisemen at the door

 

the creator’s got a lot to do

can’t see to all those in the queue

the star of that night

is far from here to give much light

 

we know we must have faith in him

but the evenings are so dim

the lack of loving care

leaves us feeling cold and bare

 

in foresight oh lord you don’t lack

but take a look behind your back

folks here for a while

have been waiting for your smile

(1985)

Translated by Paul Sohar

 


Divény (Divín), parish church, 17th century. Photo: József Sisa

 

KÁROLY JUNG

BELATED CONTRITION

Kései bűnbánat

 

It was I who abandoned you, my Lord,

And for this you’re punishing me now.

Today I saw men, grown men crying,

Accomplished men, among them my own father,

And another one, too, who burst into tears:

I’ve seldom seen an aged peasant cry.

My Lord, misery is nothing new to you,

Nor the infinite defencelessness

That crushes the greybeard as his power wanes.

The poet, he, the prophets’ progeny, said:

Behold the age-old misery of old age.

As I gaze across my natal land,

Now orphaned, the quiet within me is so great, my Lord,

That the sighs of all, living and dead,

The words of the living, the ancestral chorus,

All reach my heart here, within. Noisy

Aliens! Those who perturb my peace anew

Cannot disturb this silence.

Just this side of the horizon

Rises the trench-embankment in the field –

Some ethnos (what a technical term to use!)

Left it at least a thousand years ago.

That they should be not Romans but barbarians

Is merely the usual sneer that history makes.

I could swear I’m already hearing the crickets

As dusk settles toward the evening in June,

Or maybe, I’m just hallucinating again:

It’s only the lorries trucking toward Europe.

And after the silence comes the historical sobbing:

Thus sobbed the Greek above Patroclus’s body.

My Lord, surely do I deserve your anger,

As many others surely do as well:

We’re selfish, our ambition infinite,

Many abandoning our compatriots,

We too are scattered in our slow diaspora

Just like the prophet’s people in the world.

We’ve been scattered, but over our natal lands.

We no longer sense our path, my Lord,

Neither separately, each one his own,

Nor together, no matter how many we may be.

Where we should go, my Lord, I do not know.

For fear has set up shop within us now,

We prick our ears, we lie low, we loiter,

Inuring ourselves: the tears of crying men

Scarcely touch our souls.

I sit on steps before a door: it’s locked.

Here was once the station’s waiting-room.

The station’s exit is fully overgrown;

Weeds spread where people seldom tread.

Hardly a soul departs hence anymore,

Not even those who left here once before.

Once departed, they no longer visit.

When wind whips up, the world sends dispatches

Over telegraph poles – Morse in the humming,

But in a different language, incomprehensible.

My Lord, many of us have abandoned our past,

While the spiteful present has barred our way.

This present cannot even be expressed,

And the future that belongs to us

And to our heirs is at this point all

The less expressible. Free us, my Lord,

But not from the past, our past, to which we cling,

Not from the present – we’re loath to yield that, too –

Nor from the future, which remains unknown,

But from our loitering, our expectancy;

Put words in our mouths: the intelligible

Word, Do not let us hobble our own strides,

But show us the way, the true and passable one:

My Lord, watch over each in our assembly!

Translated by John M. Ridland and Peter V. Czipott

  


Divény (Divín), parish church, 17th century. Photo: József Sisa


 

GIZELLA HERVAY

BANISHED RAINBOW

(Számûzött szivárvány) (Excerpts)

 

XVI.

you have fallen naked into a bomb-crater

the sky above you studded with barbed wire

eternal night sunless

on your body the rubble of brick

 

crawl out to the ground on all fours

stand up don’t fear you have the strength

lift your head high

all the suffering here is yours

Translated by Len Roberts and Krisztina Lay


L.

Only in imagination can you get home

on the torn-up, wounded roads of familiar faces

barbed wire covers the eyes,

only handshakes can look each other in the eye

 

we’ll get accustomed to sign language –

dash-parenthesis – some one has bit the dust

three dots … ellipsis … sold down the river,

silence: we’re together

Translated by Ádám Makkai

 

LVIII.

tossed onto the threshold of my country

tied up tight with grey strings

a howling, suspicious package

 

I get dissembled and re-assembled

a clock gets planted into my throat

surely my corpse will be force-fed

though till then they won’t even kick me – – –

lo, it’s for me that the bell tolls!

(1980)

Translated by Ádám Makkai

 

 
Rohó (Rohov), country house, 19th century. Photo: József Sisa

 

ÁRPÁD FARKAS

ON THE LITTER OF LEAVES

Avaron

 

Fallen face-first on the litter of leaves

rolling on the thundering boundaries,

that man speaks out his thoughts

like one who hasn’t been slapped in the mouth,

like one who takes even his breath

from the bowels of the earth,

 

stones cough on his lungs,

clayey mud sticks

on his tongue,

so that he can feel,

not just see,

the earth, where he was taken from,

for resurrection.

 

Fallen face-first on the litter of leaves,

and still going on,

waking the tall

but sleeping poplar,

not letting the pine forests

stitch together, with green needles,

all that is already mythless,

but still conscience –

 

Fallen face-first on the litter of leaves,

looking for some danger,

in bone-wood up to his waist,

he just keeps going further and further,

like someone for whom a reigning forest

and such a land were custom fit,

so as to save this grievous dominion,

breath by steady breath.

(1968)

Translated by Len Roberts

 


Alsókorompa (Dolná Krupá), Brunswick mansion. Charles Moreau, 1820–1822. Photo: József Sisa


ISTVÁN FERENCZES

ECHOES TO THE BLUES

Blues

 

Ladies and gentlemen

the man in whose blood

they pan for gold

Louis Armstrong

now sings for you

 

Homeless in my homeland

I’m a livid spot on my country

it’s me

the dirty scum

it’s me

the blood spat on snow

it’s me

the dark billiard ball

it’s me

the second-hand burial suit

it’s me

the twentieth-century black pine boksz

it’s me

the lump of coal thrown in the fire

 

a homeless

livid spot

the holy ascension of liberty

that’s me

the worn-out record

that’s me

the soot-stained glass

held up to the solar eclipse

that’s me

the shadow of graveyards

that’s me

 

a livid spot on my homeland

homeless in my homeland

 

in whose blood

they panned for gold

ladies and gentlemen

the man with the golden horn

Louis Armstrong

sang for you

Translated by Paul Sohar

 


Malonya (Mlyňany), Ambrózy-Migazzi mansion. Loránd Balogh, 1895. Photo: József Sisa 

 

LAJOS ZSÉLYI NAGY

A CZECHOSLOVAKIAN HUNGARIAN POET’S SUPPLICATION TO THE LORD

Csehszlovákiai magyar költő fohásza az Úrhoz

 

My Lord, enlighten our wits,

create ministers, scalawags

and piano tuners for us,

deliver us from tinnitus,

from earlobe-tugging and tongue transplants,

for our fate’s as thorny as a cactus,

and hard, too, as a ram’s horns –

look upon your peasants, my Lord,

stuck neck-deep in the ground like onions,

yielding nothing but barren invective;

do something with us, All-powerful,

let us not forever snare flies

like the fly-amanita fungus:

seat us on your shining threshold,

slip your business card into our breast pockets

and initiate us into your secrets!

Furthermore:

we’d willingly accept from You

some powerful trumpets,

the jawbone of an ass,

brimstone hail, and whatnot.

 

Be good-hearted toward us, my Lord:

we’ll rustle up a burning briar bush for You,

from which your crackling mercy

can pummel us, too,

now and forever after

Amen.

(1971)

Translated by Peter V. Czipott

 

Nemesgomba (Hubice), country house, 19th century. Photo: József Sisa

 

DEZSŐ GYŐRY

IF ONCE WE DISAPPEAR

Ha egyszer elfogyunk

 

Often I can’t fall asleep,

the bed is hot, I’m tossed by the wave,

in dreams I see my people’s fate

is no great obsequy but a withering.2

And I groan out loud like a galley-slave.

 

I don’t fathom ourselves and you, God:

so, have we no minds, have you no heart?

your hat will lose its crown of flowers,3

it’ll be a shame if once we disappear,

and a greater shame, if we forever depart.

(1937) – Translated by John M. Ridland and Peter V. Czipott

 

 
Rárósmulyad (Muľa), parish church. István Medgyaszay, 1909–1910. Photo: József Sisa

 

SÁNDOR KÁNYÁDI

TOWARDS NOAH’S ARK

Noé bárkája felé

 

on the back of the Imre Nagy painting4

We must gather in, herd in everything.

The words as well. Not one word,

not one dialect word should be left out.

Nothing is superfluous.

 

It may as well pour for forty thousand days

and forty thousand nights, if not even

one bubble of remorse

trails the ark.

For the water shall go down.

And the mud shall dry.

 

And then from the preserved,

existing word we can

again bring forth

the very first wheat stalk,

if we are not allowed to live

upon the Word anymore.

(1973)

Translated by Len Roberts and Mariann Nagy

 

 
Kistapolcsány (Topoľčianky), castle, 17th century. Photo: József Sisa


 

Notes:

 

1 A Nation Dismembered: The 1920 Treaty of Trianon in Hungarian Poetry. Hungarian Review, Budapest, 2019, 216 pp. Corrigenda. In our March issue, on page 100, the missing name of the poet of “Indian Dirge” is Tibor Tollas. With our apoligies, the Editors.

2 These lines form a pessimistic rebuttal to the poet Mihály Vörösmarty (1800–1855) and his lines in his poem, “Szózat” (Appeal): Around the graves where we shall die / a weeping world will come, / and millions will in pity gaze / upon the martyrs’ tomb.” (Translation: Watson Kirkconnell.)

3 This line alludes to the poet Sándor Petôfi (1823–1849) and his lines in the poem, “A magyar nemzet” (The Hungarian Nation): “If Earth’s the hat that God puts on / Then Hungary is its flowery crown.” (Translation: John M. Ridland and Peter V. Czipott.)

4 One of the best-known paintings of the renowned Transylvanian Hungarian painter, Imre Nagy (1893–1967), is entitled “Noah’s Ark” (1973).

 


You have to log in or registrate for writing comments.



HUNGARIAN REVIEW is published
by BL Nonprofit Kft. It is an affiliate
of the bi-monthly journal Magyar Szemle,
published since 1991

Editor-in-Chief: Tamás Magyarics
Deputy Editor-in Chief: István Kiss
Associate Editors: Gyula Kodolányi, John O'Sullivan
Managing Editor: Ildikó Geiger

Editorial office: Budapest, 1067, Eötvös u. 24., HUNGARY
E-mail: hungarianreview@hungarianreview.com
Online edition: www.hungarianreview.com