Stacks and stacks
of wooden plaques:
Prayers on front,
Art on the back.
Each a wish
and a dream?
More an expression,
or so it seems.
Whatever prayer
may be writ,
There’s always
something
more to it.
A need to show
one’s unique soul:
To tell the world
that one is whole.
A life reduced
to a shingle:
Multitudes,
to a single.
I remember viewing the West Lake
While leaning on a pagoda rail.
The boats all clustered in threes or twos.
The islets under deep Autumn blues.
Flute song arose from among the cattails.
And a line of white birds - overhead - sailed.
I planned to fix my old fishing pole,
but clouds on water had my mind & soul.
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'll be the tree, if you'll be its flower;
I'll be the flower, if you'll be the dew;
I'll be the dew, if you'll be the sunshine
That glistens as it unites we two.
If you, My Love, should become the Heavens,
I'd be reborn as a star on high.
Even if you turned into Hell, itself,
I'd be damned, and I'd gladly fry.
The Original Poem in Hungarian:
Fa leszek, ha fának vagy virága.
Ha harmat vagy: én virág leszek.
Harmat leszek, ha te napsugár vagy...
Csak, hogy lényink egyesüljenek.
Ha, leányka, te vagy a mennyország:
Akkor én csillagá változom.
Ha, leányka, te vagy a pokol: (hogy
Egyesüljünk) én elkárhozom.
We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.
Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicéan barks of yore,
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary, way-worn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.
On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece,
And the grandeur that was Rome.
Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche
How statue-like I see thee stand,
The agate lamp within thy hand!
Ah, Psyche, from the regions which
Are Holy-Land!
I walked abroad in a snowy day:
I ask'd the soft snow with me to play:
She play'd & she melted in all her prime,
And the winter call'd it a dreadful crime.
Cruelty has a Human Heart,
And Jealousy a Human Face;
Terror the Human Form Divine,
And Secrecy the Human Dress.
The Human Dress is forged Iron,
The Human Form a fiery Forge,
The Human Face a Furnace seal'd,
The Human Heart its hungry Gorge.
The debt is paid,
The verdict said,
The Furies laid,
The plague is stayed,
All fortunes made;
Turn the key and bolt the door,
Sweet is death forevermore.
Nor haughty hope, nor swart chagrin,
Nor murdering hate, can enter in.
All is now secure and fast;
Not the gods can shake the Past;
Flies-to the adamantine door
Bolted down forevermore.
None can re-enter there, --
No thief so politic,
No Satan with a royal trick
Steal in by window, chink, or hole,
To bind or unbind, add what lacked,
Insert a leaf, or forge a name,
New-face or finish what is packed,
Alter or mend eternal Fact.
There is health in thy gray wing,
Health of nature's furnishing.
Say, thou modern-winged antique,
Was thy mistress ever sick?
In each heaving of thy wing
Thou dost health and leisure bring,
Thou dost waive disease and pain
And resume new life again.
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