The Bustle in a House
The Morning after Death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted opon Earth --
The Sweeping up the Heart
And putting Love away
We shall not want to use again
Until Eternity --
The living come with grassy tread
To read the gravestones on the hill;
The graveyard draws the living still,
But never any more the dead.
The verses in it say and say:
'The ones who living come today
To read the stones and go away
Tomorrow dead will come to stay.'
So sure of death the marbles rhyme,
Yet can't help marking all the time
How no one dead will seem to come.
What is it men are shrinking from?
It would be easy to be clever
And tell the stones: Men hate to die
And have stopped dying now forever.
I think they would believe the lie.
A not admitting of the wound
Until it grew so wide
That all my Life had entered it
And there were troughs beside -
A closing of the simple lid
that opened to the sun
Until the tender Carpenter
Perpetual nail it down -
Up comes the Moon on the river,
Trees and grass quietly quiver.
Near Szeged a wooded island,
Od fishing barque, tied to the land.
By the moonlight, on this barque, old,
Sat a fisherman I am told,
Played a tune as well as he might,
Played it well, well into the night.
On the Tisza, velvet darkness,
Starry sky, the stars numberless,
Spread a shroud studded with diamonds
Radiating starry light fronds.
May have been this very spot, hark!
Right under this rickety barque,
In the very depths of the deep
An ancient king's sleeping his sleep.
His coffin is gold and silver,
Of iron is made its cover.
Up the river is glistening,
Down the ancient king, listening.
Translation by Frank Veszely in: Hungarian Poetry: One Thousand Years. 2023. Friesen Press: Altona, MB, Canada.
I’m getting more at ease with Death by the day. In a broader sense, it’s progressively easier to not get worked up over the everchanging and unpredictable nature of the world.
Have no mother, have no dad,
have no country, have no God,
no cradle, no winding sheet,
no lover, no kisses sweet.
Haven't eaten for three days,
my head spins, the body sways...
Twenty years! My might, my gale,
twenty years are now for sale.
If there is no customer,
sell it to Devil in hell.
With a clean heart, I will steal,
If need be, I'll even kill.
They'll catch me and hang me up,
with soft earth cover me up,
and death-bringing grass will start
from my beautiful, clean heart.
Translation by Frank Veszely in Hungarian Poetry: One Thousand Years (2023) Altona, Manitoba: Friesen Press, pp. 156-157.
NOTE: This poem got Attila expelled from university and preemptively scuttled any possibility of a career in academia. (Hence, my affinity for it. Any poetry that extracts such a cost is probably excellent poetry.)
Mostly, the dead decay:
they crumble
or rot to goo.
But some trees
turn steely
hard & smooth --
fibers showing like
rigid sinews.
Bare of bark and leaves
and flowers,
but unyielding of
girth and substance.
But even those trees
give way --
perhaps in geologic time
rather than biologic time,
But still the tree will become
someone & something else.
Before I got my eye put out --
I liked as well to see
As other creatures, that have eyes --
And know no other way --
But were it told to me, Today,
That I might have the Sky
For mine, I tell you that my Heart
Would split, for size of me --
The Meadows -- mine --
The Mountains -- mine --
All Forests -- Stintless stars --
As much of noon, as I could take --
Between my finite eyes --
The Motions of the Dipping Birds --
The Morning's Amber Road --
For mine -- to look at when I liked,
The news would strike me dead --
So safer -- guess -- with just my soul
Opon the window pane
Where other creatures put their eyes --
Incautious -- of the Sun --
Tiger Riding for Beginners 