Hungarian Poet

[Guest guest]

That Which Your Heart Disguises

Amit szívedbe rejtesz

 

For the eightieth birthday of Freud

 

That which your heart disguises

open your eyes and see;

that which your eye surmises

let your heart wait to be.

 

Desire--and all concede it--

kills all who are not dead.

But happiness, you need it

as you need daily bread.

 

Children, all of the living

yearn for our mother's arms;

lovemaking, or death-giving,

to wed's to take up arms.

 

Be like the Man of Eighty,

hunted by men with guns,

who bleeds, but in his beauty

still sires a million sons.

 

That old thorn, broken piercing

your sole, is long since drawn.

Now from your heart's releasing

death, too, falls and is gone.

 

That which your eye surmises

seize with your hand and will;

that which your heart disguises

is yours to kiss or kill.

(1936)

 

[...]

 

And So I've Found

My Native Country...

Íme, hát megleltem hazámat

 

And so I've found my native country,

that soil the gravedigger will frame,

where they who write the words above me

do not for once misspell my name.

 

This black collection-box receives me

(for no one needs me any more),

this Iron Six that was worth twenty,

this coin left over from the war.

 

None needs that iron ring inscripted

with sweet words, that the world is new:

rights, land.--Our laws are the leftovers;

now pretty gold rings all pursue.

 

For many years I had been lonely.

Then many people visited.

I'd have been happy if they'd stayed.

You are alone, was what they said.

 

And so I lived, useless and empty,

and now I see it all quite plain.

They let me play the fool until

by now even my death's in vain.

 

All through my life I've tried to weather

the whirlwind that would always blow.

I was more sinned against than sinning,

and it's a laugh that it was so.

 

Spring, summer, autumn, all are lovely;

but winter's loveliest for one

who hopes for hearth and home and family

only for others, when all's done.

(1937)

 

translators(dragomen) : Zsuzsanna Ozsváth and Frederick Turner