József Attila l Amit Szivedbe Rejtesz
That Which Your Heart Disguises
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 mothers arms;
lovemaking, or death-giving,
to weds 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 hearts 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)
József Attila l Eszmélet
Consciousness
1.
The dawn dissevers earth and skies
and at its pure and lovely bidding
the children and the dragonflies
twirl out into the sunworlds budding;
no vapor dims the airs receding,
a twinkling lightness buoys the eyes!
Last night into their trees were gliding
the leaves, like tiny butterflies.
2.
Blue, yellow, red, they flocked my dream,
smudged images the mind had taken,
I felt the cosmic order gleam --
and not a speck of dust was shaken.
My dreams a floating shade; I waken;
order is but an iron regime.
By day, the moons my bodys beacon,
by night, an inner sun will burn.
3.
Im gaunt, sometimes breads all I touch,
I seek amid this trivial chatter
unrecompensed, and yearn to clutch,
what has more truth than dice, more matter.
No roast rib warms my mouth and platter,
no child my heart, forgoing such --
the cat cant both, how deft a ratter,
inside and outside make her catch.
4.
Just like split firewood stacked together,
the universe embraces all,
so that each object holds the other
confined by pressures mutual,
all things ordained, reciprocal.
Only unbeing can branch and feather,
only becoming blooms at all;
what is must break, or fade, or wither.
5.
Down by the branched marshaling-yard
I lurked behind a root, fear-stricken,
of silence was the living shard,
I tasted grey and weird-sweet lichen.
I saw a shadow leap and thicken:
it was the shadow of the guard --
did he suspect? -- watched his shade quicken
upon the heaped coal dew-bestarred.
6.
Inside there is a world of pain,
outside is only explanation.
The worlds your scab, the outer stain,
your souls the fever-inflammation.
Jailed by your hearts own insurrection,
youre only free when you refrain,
nor build so fine a habitation,
the landlord takes it back again.
7.
I stared from underneath the evening
into the cogwheel of the sky --
the loom of all the past was weaving
law from those glimmery threads, and I
looked up again into the sky
from underneath the steams of dreaming
and saw that always, by and by,
the weft of law is torn, unseaming.
8.
Silence gave ear: the clock struck one.
Maybe you could go back to boydom;
walled in with concrete dank and wan,
maybe imagine hints of freedom.
And now I stand, and through the sky-dome
the stars, the Dippers, shine and burn
like bars, the sign of jail and thraldom,
above a silent cell of stone.
9.
Ive heard the crying of the steel,
Ive heard the laugh of rain, its pattern;
Ive seen the past burst through its seal:
only illusions are forgotten,
for naught but love was I begotten,
bent, though, beneath my burdens wheel --
why must we forge such weapons, flatten
the gold awareness of the real?
10.
He only is a man, who knows
there is no mother and no father,
that death is only what he owes
and lifes a bonus altogether,
returns his find to its bequeather,
holding it only till he goes;
nor to himself, nor to another,
takes on a gods or pastors pose.
11.
Ive seen what they call happiness:
soft, blonde, it weighed two hundred kilos;
it waddled smiling on the grass,
its tail a curl between two pillows.
Its lukewarm puddle glowed with yellows,
it blinked and grunted at me -- yes,
I still remember where it wallows,
touched by the dawns of blissfulness.
12.
I live beside the tracks, where I
can see the trains pass through the station.
I see the brilliant windows fly
in floating dark and dim privation.
Through the eternal nights negation
just so the lit-up days rush by;
in all the cars illumination,
silent, resting my elbow, I.
József Attila l Sas
Eagle
Eagle, gigantic, diving
heavens echoey precipices!
What winged things this, arriving
from voids and nothingnesses!
His starry beak of azure
devours the vaulted cosm,
his talons of erasure
rip at its flesh-warm bosom.
The worlds eyeball, transparent,
weeps at the bloody capture,
the downy feathers errant.
This is the red dawns rapture.
There is no height above it,
essence is torn and savaged;
there is no depth beneath it,
being itself is ravished.
One wing is my own aura,
the other wing is Flóra:
newborn, beyond all seeming,
each thus in each redeeming.
József Attila l Bukj Föl Az Árból
Tumble out of the Flood
Terrify me, my hidden God,
I need your wrath, your scourge, your thunder;
quick, come tumble out of the flood,
lest nothingness sweep us asunder.
I am the one the horse knocks down,
up to my eyes in dirt, a cipher,
and yet I play with knives of pain
too monstrous for mans heart to suffer.
How easily I flame! the sun
is not more prone to burn -- be frightening,
scream at me: leave the fire alone!
Rap my hands with your bolt of lightning.
Hammer it into me with rage
or grace: its innocence thats evil!
that innocence could be my cage
burns at me fiercer than a devil.
A fragment from a wreck I lie,
tossed by a cruel tempest frothing;
alone; I dare, and I defy:
all merely signifying nothing.
Id choke my very breath, to die,
your rod and staff thus disobeying,
and look you boldly in the eye,
you empty, human-faced unbeing!
József Attila l Ki-Be Ugrál...
My Eyes Jump In and Out...
My eyes jump in and out, Im mad again.
When Im like this, dont hurt me. Hold me tight.
When all I am goes crosseyed in my brain,
dont show your fist to me: my broken sight
would never recognize it anyway.
Dont jerk me, sweet, off the void edge of the night.
Think: I have nothing left to give away,
no one to have and hold. What I called "me"
is nothing too. I gnaw its crumbs today,
and when this poem is done it will not be...
As space is by a searchlight, I am pierced through
by naked sight: what sin is this they see
who answer not, no matter what I do,
they who by law should love, be claimed by me.
Do not believe this sin you cant construe,
till my grave-mould acquits and sets me free.
József Attila l Kiáltozás
The Scream
Love me wildly, to distraction,
scare away my huge affliction,
in the cage of an abstraction,
I, an ape, jump up and down,
bare my teeth in malediction,
for I have no faith or fiction,
in the terror of His frown.
Mortal, do you hear my singing,
or mere natures echoes ringing?
Hug me, dont just stare unseeing
as the sharpened knife comes down --
theres no guardian thats undying
who will hear my song and sighing:
in the terror of His frown.
As a raft upon a river,
Slovak raftman, whosoever,
so the human race forever
dumb with pain, goes drifting down --
but I scream in vain endeavour:
love me: Ill be good, I shiver
in the terror of His frown.
József Attila l Mama
Mama
On Mama now my thoughts have dawdled
all of a week. Clothes-basket cradled
creaked on her hip; shed climb the stairway
up to the drying-attics airway.
Then, for I was an honest fellow,
how I would shriek and stamp and bellow!
That swollen laundry needs no mother.
Take me, and leave it to another.
But still she drudged so quietly,
nor scolded me nor looked upon me,
and the hung clothes would glow and billow
high up above, with swoop and wallow.
Its too late now to still my bother;
what a giant was my mother --
over the sky her grey hair flutters,
her bluing tints the heavens waters.
József Attila l Reménytelenül
Without Hope
Slowly, musingly
I am as one who comes to rest
by that sad, sandy, sodden shore
and looks around, and undistressed
nods his wise head, and hopes no more.
Just so I try to turn my gaze
with no deceptions, carelessly.
A silver axe-swish lightly plays
on the white leaf of the poplar tree.
Upon a branch of nothingness
my heart sits trembling voicelessly,
and watching, watching, numberless,
the mild stars gather round to see.
In heavens ironblue vault ...
In heavens ironblue vault revolves
a cool and lacquered dynamo.
The word sparks in my teeth, resolves
-- oh, noiseless constellations! -- so --
In me the past falls like a stone
through space as voiceless as the air.
Time, silent, blue, drifts off alone.
The swordblade glitters; and my hair --
My moustache, a fat chrysalis,
tastes on my mouth of transience.
My heart aches, words cool out to this.
To whom, though, might their sound make sense?
(1933)
József Attila l A Hetedik
The Seventh
If you set out in this world,
better be born seven times.
Once, in a house on fire,
once, in a freezing flood,
once, in a wild madhouse,
once, in a field of ripe wheat,
once, in an empty cloister,
and once among pigs in sty.
Six babes crying, not enough:
you yourself must be the seventh.
When you must fight to survive,
let your enemy see seven.
One, away from work on Sunday,
one, starting his work on Monday,
one, who teaches without payment,
one, who learned to swim by drowning,
one, who is the seed of a forest,
and one, whom wild forefathers protect,
but all their tricks are not enough:
you yourself must be the seventh.
If you want to find a woman,
let seven men go for her.
One, who gives heart for words,
one, who takes care of himself,
one, who claims to be a dreamer,
one, who through her skirt can feel her,
one, who knows the hooks and snaps,
one, who steps upon her scarf:
let them buzz like flies around her.
You yourself must be the seventh.
If you write and can afford it,
let seven men write your poem.
One, who builds a marble village,
one, who was born in his sleep,
one, who charts the sky and knows it,
one, whom words call by his name,
one, who perfected his soul,
one, who dissects living rats.
Two are brave and four are wise;
You yourself must be the seventh.
And if all went as was written,
you will die for seven men.
One, who is rocked and suckled,
one, who grabs a hard young breast,
one, who throws down empty dishes,
one, who helps the poor win;
one, who worked till he goes to pieces,
one, who just stares at the moon.
The world will be your tombstone:
you yourself must be the seventh.
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