Miklós Radnóti Contents:

About Miklós Radnóti

Portrait
Mary
Deathmarch The Bull
Before the Storm
Yesterday & Today
The Second Eclogue
Enchantment
A Hesitant Ode
Holocaust poems,
How Others See...
translated from the Hungarian Neither Memories Nor Magic
by Thomas Land The Hunted
Fragment
The Seventh Eclogue
Letter to My Wife
À la Recherche...
The Eighth Eclogue
Deathmarch
Picture Postcards, I-IV

An Epilogue, by the Translator

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 attempt at the permanent “ethnic cleansing” of Europe.
Anne Frank, Éva Láng and András Mezei were children.
Primo Levi and Paul Celan were very young men eventually
compelled to turn to literature in order to comprehend and digest
the brutality of their experience, for which they had been totally
unprepared.
Unlike many others, Radnóti had plenty of opportunities to
escape forced labour and death at the hands of the Nazis. He was
at the height of his literary powers when he chose to enter the
storm, notebook in hand, deliberately seeking to transform the
horror into poetry, as he put it, “for reminders to future ages”. His
last poems transcend the limits of race and tribe in a universal
appeal to humanity.
ABOUT MIKLÓS RADNÓTI Read in chronological order, the poems follow the author
“along the highways, down the soul’s appalling deep chasms” to
his clearly anticipated death. These intensely autobiographical
THE BEST POEMS in this selection were found by chance in
pieces describe a writer stripped of all the security and comfort of
the communal grave of 22 Hungarian prisoners executed because
civilized existence and caught up in history’s insane march towards
they were also Jewish.
collective destruction, who yet maintains his stubborn personal
They are treasured as some of the most flawless modern
dignity and fierce concern for the future.
additions to their country’s rich poetic heritage. They have gone a
Radnóti went on publicly fighting back until the end.
little way towards teaching tolerance to new generations of
According to the legend that has grown up around his figure --
Hungarians in the treatment of their racial, religious and ethnic
which I have checked against reality in interviews with survivors
minorities.
of the same camps and the eventual “deathmarch” -- the poet
Born 100 years ago in 1909, Miklós Radnóti was probably the
bribed his Hungarian guards to smuggle his work to the outside
greatest among the mature writers of the period to witness and
world. The notebook containing his final and most moving poems
record the Holocaust. He was murdered in 1944, shortly before the
and found in the end on his body had been going around from
close of the Second World War, a victim of the National Socialists’
hand to hand, giving encouragement to fellow prisoners.

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 A facsimile edition of the notebook, containing the work in followers with shame and remorse. They are now the first to cry:
careful, even handwriting and complete with printers’ instructions, Never Again! We know very little of the execution squad
was published in Hungary in 1971. Popular demand necessitated comprising retreating soldiers who murdered the poet at the age
an immediate second printing. Copies have become prized of 35. Radnóti goes on, gathering disciples.
collectors’ items.
He was born in Budapest and educated at Szeged University.
He was prevented from pursuing an academic career because of his Thomas Ország-Land,
racial origin as well as his humanism. London & Budapest, 2009
He was obliged to make a meagre living by producing what
are recognized today as brilliant translations from classical Greek
and Latin as well as English, French and German poetry. Some of
his own poems were seized and others not allowed to be published
at all, while the rest attracted little attention. Most of Radónti’s
contemporaries never heard of him at the time.
Radnóti introduced himself in his tragic notebook as “a
Hungarian poet” despite his deprivation of Hungarian status and
identity as well as civil rights because of his Jewish birth. He was
executed as a Jew, exactly as he had described in his very last poem
the mass shooting of civilian captives, despite his earlier, deeply
felt conversion to Christianity.
Today, his poetry and legend mean many things to many
people. To me, they are a flame of hope against racist and religious
bigotry. For Radnóti’s dogged refusal to tolerate hostile
discrimination against any minority has in a way triumphed in the
end.
The inane ideology that triggered the Holocaust has blighted
the lives of generations of the descendants of its authors and their

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PORTRAIT THE BULL
Hitherto, I lived the throbbing life of a youthful bull
I’m nearly twenty-two years old. Thus bored in the noonday heat among pregnant cows in the field,
Christ too might have appeared in the autumn running around in unending circles declaring his powers
at the same age when he and waving amid his game a foaming flag of saliva.
still had no beard, he was blond and maidens He shakes his head and turns with the splitting, thick air on his
dreamt of him nightly! horns
and behind his stamping hooves the tormented grass and earth
spatters widely about the terrified green pasture.
(1930)
And still I live like a bull, but a bull that suddenly stops
in the heart of the meadow singing with crickets, stops nostrils
lifted
and sniffing the air. For he senses that far in the mountain forests
MARY the roebuck too stops and listens and lightly flees with the wind,
the hissing wind that carries the stench of a distant wolf pack --
thus the bull snorts, but he will not escape like the deer
Just look at her hands! like dying and considers that when his time is to come, he will fight and fall
flowers in frost. Her hair cascading. and his bones will be scattered about in the district by the horde --
She’s resting, a graceful dove and slowly and sadly the bull bellows through the fat air.
on a pillow. She’s Mary!
but you have known and loved Thus I will struggle and thus I will fall when the hour is come,
girls with such faces! and the district will treasure my bones for reminders to future
ages
(1930)
.
(1933)

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BEFORE THE STORM YESTERDAY & TODAY
You sit upon the peak and on your knees asleep Yesterday in the light, cooling drizzle,
that youthful woman ripened for your love; behind, two sizzling lovers with peach-ripe lips emerged
the bristly deeds of war; beware! hold dear and keep from the kneeling shrubs, and leaning each to each
walked past, proceeding across the meadow;
your life, hold dear your world which you with hardened hands
have built around your life while all about you death and today, ferocious cannon with muddy wheels
in circles hovered around and around above the lands -- arrived at daybreak, served by steaming soldiers --
their skulls protected by gray combat helmets,
behold, it has returned! the garden’s nests from the high their bodies dragging strong, bitter odours,
treetops come plunging down in terror stricken flight, the heavy flags of urgent male loneliness.
all things are about to break! and keep an eye on the sky
(Oh, seedling blond childhood, how far you have passed!
because already lightning shakes the firmament; oh, dove-white old age, I will never reach you!
wind tussles, drags the cradles as the men-folk whimper the poet stands knee-deep in slippery blood
asleep as weakly as the helpless innocent; and each song he sings is his last.)
(1936)
the wind blows on their dreams, they grumble and turn around,
they wake with a start and stare at you who’s been awake
and sitting up amid the fleeting thunder, the sound

of roaring future battles being prepared; above,

the splendid wind speaks of the storm and so do the clouds;
it’s time to wrap your woman warmly in your love.
(1934)

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THE SECOND ECLOGUE the fish -- and so on. Can you make... anything? No! you sit
and listen to your engine until your eardrums split;
you cannot even hear me! You are fused with the plane.
Pilot: How will you feel when flying over us again?
Last night we flew so far that I had to laugh in rage;
their fighters droned like bee-swarms trying to engage Pilot:
us from above with strong defensive fire -- but, my friend, You’ll laugh. I fly in fear... desiring, up, above,
our fresh squadrons showed up on the horizon in the end. to lie on a bed, eyes closed, caressing with my love.
I thought they’d prang and pick me up with dust pan and brush Or just to hum about her and to conjure up such a scene
but I’m back, see! and tomorrow cowardly Europe can rush daydreaming in the steamy chaos of the canteen.
again to air-raid shelters to hide from me while it may... When I am up, I would come down! down here, I long to fly,
but never mind, friend. Did you write since yesterday? without a place of my own between my own earth and sky.
I have grown much too fond of the aeroplane too, I know,
Poet: we’ve learned to share a rhythm of pain so long ago...
I did, what else could I do? The poet writes his lines, You understand -- and please... write about me! make it known
the pussy cat miaows and the puppy whines, that I too was a man: destructive, homeless, alone
the fishy coyly spawns. I write about everything above and below. Who will grasp the causes of my deed?...
so even you should know, up there, while soldiering, Explain me, won’t you?
how I live when the bloodshot sick moonlight staggers down
among the ruined streets as the bombs destroy the town, Poet:
walls cave in, homes explode, the squares curl up in fright, If I live -- with some who still want to read.
breath falters, even the sky is disgusted with the sight, (1941)
the bombers come, persistent, sometimes they disappear
to swoop in rattling frenzy on the houses drowned in fear!
I write, what else could I do... Poems too can be vicious
and dangerous, you know, odd lines are too capricious
for words, demanding bravery... The poet writes his lines,
the pussy cat miaows and the puppy whines,

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ENCHANTMENT A HESITANT ODE
We’re sitting in the brightness How long I have prepared, dear, to describe to you
and scowling in the glare, the secret constellation of my love,
a rosebush is leaping perhaps its substance only, just in a single image.
over the hedgerow, Your teeming sense within me floods like life itself
the light leaping also and sometimes it is timeless, certain and secure:
as the rain-clouds gather, eternal like a fossil shell within a rock.
lightning streaks by The silken, feline moonlit night above my head
and the lash of thunder begins the hunt for buzzing tiny dreams in flight.
clashes with thunder And still I have not managed to describe to you
again and again, high how much it means to me to sense your caring gaze
high up in the sky, as it hesitates upon my hand when I’m at work.
below them the blue No similes will do. I scrap them as they come.
of the lake is withering, I will begin this whole attempt again tomorrow
its waters rising -- because I am worth only as much as the words
come into the house within this poem, and my search will keep me going
and take off your dress, until I am reduced to bones and tufts of hair.
out there it is raining, You’re tired. It’s been a long day for me also.
and take off your blouse What can I say? The objects, look! exchange their glances
and let the rain, the rain in praise of you; a broken cube of sugar sings
wash our hearts together. on the table; and a drop of honey falls and, like
(1942) a ball of gold, it glitters on the tablecloth;
and spontaneously now, an empty tumbler rings out:
it’s glad it lives with you. Perhaps I’ll have the time
to tell you what it’s like when it expects you home.
Descending darkly, flocks of dreams approach you lightly,

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they flit away yet keep returning to your brow.
Your drowsy eyes still send a last farewell towards me.
HOW OTHERS SEE...
Your loosened hair cascades in freedom. You’re asleep.
The lengthy shadow of your eyelids softly flutters. How others see this region, I cannot understand:
Your hand, a resting birch twig, falls upon my pillow. to me, this little country is menaced motherland
I share your sleep: you’re not a different world; engulfed by flames, the world of my childhood swaying far,
and even here I sense as a multitude of secret and I am grown from this land as tender branches are
and thin, sage lines relax in the tranquil from trees. And may my body sink into this soil in the end.
palm of your hand. When plants reach out towards me, I greet them as a friend
and know their names and flowers. I am at home here, knowing
(1943)
the people on the road and why and where they are going --
and how I know the meaning when, by a summer lane,
the sunset paints the walls with a liquid flame of pain!
The pilot cannot help seeing a war map from the sky,
he can’t tell below the home of Vörösmarty Mihály;*
what can he identify there? grim barracks and factories,
but I see steeples, oxen, farms, grasshoppers and bees;
his lens spies out the vital production plants, the fields,
but I can see the worker, afraid below, who shields
his labour, a singing orchard, a vineyard and a wood,
among the graves a granny mourning her widowhood;
and what may seem a plant or a rail line that must be wrecked
is just a signal-house with the keeper standing erect
and waving his red flag, lots of children around the guard;

______________________
* Mihály Vörösmarty (1800-1855), poet

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and a shepherd dog might roll in the dust in a factory yard;
and there’s the park with the footprints of past loves and the
NEITHER MEMORIES NOR MAGIC
flavour
of childhood kisses -- the honey, the cranberry I still savour, Concealed, my many angers lay in my heart before
and on my way to school, by the kerbside, to postpone this hour as brown seeds ripen within the apple-core,
a spot-test one certain morning, I stepped upon a stone: and I was always certain that, sword in hand, a friendly
look! There’s the stone whose magic the pilot cannot see strong angel followed behind me, an angel to defend me.
for no instrument would merge it in his topography. But when, one wild dawn, waking, you see your whole world
crumbling
True, guilty are we all here, our people as the rest, to dust and must go forward confused, a phantom fumbling
we know our faults, we know how and when we have and all but naked, your few belongings left behind,
transgressed, then you will find arising in your lightened heart, a refined
but there are blameless lives too of toil and poetry and passion, and musing, humble yearning, laconic and mature --
and infants also, with infinite capacity for compassion -- if still you can rebel, it’s not over your own sorrow
they will protect its glow while in gloomy shelters until but for a glowing, distant, sweet freedom for tomorrow.
once more our land is marked out by the finger of peace, then they
will Positions and possessions I’ve never held and won’t,
respond to our muffled words with new voices fresh and bright. but spare a moment’s thought for this wealthy life: I don’t
concern myself with vengeance, my heart is free of rage,
the world will be rebuilt -- and, although this ugly age
Spread your vast wings above us, protective cloud of night.
has banned my words, they will yet ring out beneath new walls;
alone I must live through all that in my time befalls
(Jan. 17, 1944) me knowing that neither memories nor magic can defend me;
I will not glance behind me -- above, the sky’s unfriendly,
and should you see me yet, turn away, my friend, and go on.
Where in the past a mighty protector stood behind me,
the angel might be gone.

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THE HUNTED when those who risked protest were wise to hide
and gnaw their fists in self-consuming shame --
the crazed folk grinned about their terrifying
From my window I see a hillside, doomed future, wild and drunk on blood and mire.
it cannot see me at all;
I’m still, verse trickles from my pen I lived upon this earth in such an age
but nothing matters in hiding; when the mother of an infant was a curse,
I see, though cannot grasp this solemn, when pregnant women were glad to abort,
old-fashioned grace: as ever, the living envied the corpses in the graves
the moon emerges onto the sky and while on the table foamed their poisoned cup.
the cherry tree bursts into blossom. ............................
............................

FRAGMENT I lived upon this earth in such an age

when even the poet fell silent and waited in hope
I lived upon this earth in such an age for an ancient, terrible voice to rise again --
when man was so debased he sought to kill for no-one could utter a fitting curse of such horror
for pleasure, not just to comply with orders, but the scholar of dreadful words, Isaiah the prophet.
his faith in falsehoods drove him to corruption, ............................
his life was ruled by raving self-deceptions.

I lived upon this earth in such an age

that idolized the sly police informers,
whose heroes were the killers, spies, the thieves --
and the few who held their peace or only failed
to cheer were loathed like victims of the plague.

I lived upon this earth in such an age

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THE SEVENTH ECLOGUE waiting for news, a sweet word from a woman, and decency,
freedom,
guessing the end still obscured by the darkness, dreaming of
Evening approaches the barracks, and the ferocious oak fence miracles.
braided with barbed wire, look, dissolves in the twilight.
Slowly the eye thus abandons the bounds of our captivity Lying on boards, I am a captive beast among vermin,
and only the mind, the mind is aware of the wire’s tension. the fleas renew their siege but the flies have at last retired.
Even fantasy finds no other path towards freedom. Evening has come; my captivity, behold, is curtailed
Look, my beloved, dream, that lovely liberator, by a day and so is my life. The camp is asleep. The moonshine
releases our aching bodies. The captives set out for home. lights up the land and highlights the taut barbed wire fence,
it draws the shadow of armed prison guards, seen through the
Clad in rags and snoring, with shaven heads, the prisoners window,
fly from Serbia’s blinded peaks to their fugitive homelands. walking, projected on walls, as they spy the night’s early noises.
Fugitive homeland! Oh -- is there still such a place?
still unharmed by bombs? as on the day we enlisted? Swish go the dreams, behold my beloved, the camp is asleep,
And will the groaning men to my right and my left return safely? the odd man who wakes with a snort turns about in his little space
And is there a home where hexameters are appreciated? and resumes his sleep at once, with a glowing face. Alone
I sit up awake with the lingering taste of a cigarette butt
Dimly groping line after line without punctuation, in my mouth instead of your kiss, and I get no merciful sleep,
here I write this poem as I live in the twilight, for neither can I live nor die without you, my love, any longer.
inching, like blear-eyed caterpillar, my way on the paper;
everything, torches and books, all has been seized by the Lager
guard, our mail has stopped and the barracks are muffled by fog.

Riddled with insects and rumours, Frenchmen, Poles, loud Italians,

separatist Serbs and dreamy Jews live here in the mountains --
fevered, a dismembered body, we lead a single existence,

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LETTER TO MY WIFE Will autumn leave me here forgotten, aching?
My memory’s sharper over our lovemaking;

I once believed in miracles, forgetting

Mute worlds lie in the depths, their stillness crying their age; above me, bomber squadrons setting
inside my head; I shout: no-one’s replying against the sky where I just watched the spark and
in war-dazed, silenced Serbia the distant, the colour of your eyes -- the blue then darkened,
and you are far away. My dreams, persistent, the bombs then longed to fall. I live despite them
are woven nightly in your voice, and during and I am captive. I have weighed up, item
the day it’s in my heart still reassuring -- by painful item, all my hopes still tended --
and thus I keep my silence while, profoundly and will yet find you. For you, I’ve descended,
detached, the cooling bracken stirs around me.
along the highways, down the soul’s appalling
No longer can I guess when I will see you, deep chasms. I shall transmit myself through falling
who were once firm and sure as psalms can be -- you, live flames or crimson coals to conquer the distance,
as lovely as the shadow and the light -- you, if need be learn the treebark’s tough resistance --
whom I could seek out mute, deprived of sight -- you, the calm and might of fighting men whose power
now with this landscape you don’t know entwined --you, in danger springs from cool appraisal shower
projected to the eyes, but from the mind -- you, upon me, bringing sober strength anew,
once real till to the realm of dreams you fell -- you, and I become as calm as 2 x 2.
observed from my own puberty’s deep well -- you,

nagged jealously in my soul for a truthful

pledge that you love me, that upon the youthful
proud peak of life you’ll be my bride; I’m yearning
and then, with sober consciousness returning,
I do remember that you are my wife and
my friend -- past three wild frontiers, terrified land.

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À LA RECHERCHE... now the angel of freedom guards their great dreams in the night.

Some... doesn’t matter. Where have the wise, winy evenings

Gentle past evenings, you too are ennobled through recollection! vanished?
Brilliant table adorned by poets and their young women, Swift swarmed the draftnotes and swift multiplied the poetic
where have you slid in the mud of the memory? where is the night fragments
when the exuberant friends still merrily drank the native as did the wrinkles around the lips and eyes of the wives
wine of the land from slender glasses that sparkled their glances? with enchanting smiles. The elf-footed girls grew dull
and heavy in loneliness over the silent and endless war years.
Lines of poetry swam around the glow of the lamps
and bright green adjectives swayed on the foaming crest of the Where is the night, the tavern and, under the lime trees, that table?
metre Where are the living and where are the others trampled in battle?
and still the dead were alive, the prisoners home, and the dear Still, my heart hears their voices, my hand still holds their
vanished friends wrote verse, those fallen long ago whose hearts handshakes,
lie under the soil of Spain and Flanders and Ukraine. thus I quote their works and behold their proportions and stature,
silent prisoner myself in Serbia’s wailing mountains.
Some of them charged forward gritting their teeth in the fire and
fought Where is the night? Such a night perhaps may never recur, for
only because there was nothing they could do to avoid it, death
and while their company fitfully slept around them under gives always a different perspective to all that has vanished.
the soiled shelter of night, they remembered their rooms of the They still sit at the table, they hide in the smiles of the women,
past, and they will sip from our glasses, the friends still unburied and
calm caves and islands, their retreat from this society. waiting,
lying in distant forests, asleep in foreign pastures.
Some of them travelled helpless in sealed cattle trucks to places,
some stood numbly waiting unarmed in freezing minefields,
some also went voluntarily, silent with guns in their hands
for clearly they saw their personal place and role in the fighting --

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THE EIGHTH ECLOGUE like once Nineveh, now humanity’s soul is degraded.
Did proclamations and ravenous, hellish, green clouds of locusts
serve any purpose? man must be surely the basest of creatures!
Poet: Tiny babes smashed to death against brickwalls in many places,
Greetings, handsome old man, how swiftly you climb this rugged the church towers turned into flaming torches, the houses turned
mountain path, are you lifted by wings or pursued by an army? into ovens, their residents roasting. The factories go up in smoke.
Wings lift you, passion drives you, lightning burns in your eyes -- Screaming, the streets run with people on fire and stumble and
greetings, grand old traveller, I comprehend that you must be faint.
one of the ancient wrathful prophets -- but, tell me, which one? Stirring, the heavy door of the bomb-bay opens above, leaving
corpses on city squares lying shrunken as cow-pats on meadows.
Prophet: All you have prophesied is fulfilled again. So tell me,
Which one? Nahum am I, from the city of Elkosh, who cursed what made you leave the primeval vortex again to return
the lewd Assyrian city of Nineveh, chanted the holy to earth?
word with a vengeance. I was a vessel brimming with rage!
Prophet:
Poet: My anger. That man should remain so utterly lonely
I know your ancient rage for your writing has survived. all this time while surrounded by armies of man-shaped heathens --
Also, I’d like to behold again the fall of the sinful
Prophet: cities, to see and to tell, to bear witness to future ages.
It has survived. But evil multiplies faster today,
and the Lord’s purpose is still unknown to this very day; for Poet:
clearly the Lord has said the majestic rivers would dry up, But you have spoken already. The Lord has said through your
Carmel would weaken, the flower of Bashan and Lebanon wither, words:
and mountains would tremble and finally fire consume it all. Woe to the fortifications laden with loot, to the bastions
It all came to pass. built of corpses! Tell me, in all the millennia, what
has fanned your anger to rage with such obstinate, heavenly
Poet: burning?
The nations rush to slaughter each other; Prophet:

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Back in ancient times, the Lord touched my mis-shaped lips
with his burning coals (as He also touched wise Isaiah’s), thus He
DEATHMARCH
searched my heart; the embers were hot and glowing, an angel
Collapsed exhausted, only a fool would rise again
held them with tongs. “Behold,” I cried to the Lord, “I am waiting,
to drag his knees and ankles once more like marching pain
ready to go out to spread Your word.” Once sent out
yet press on as though wings were to lift him on his way,
by the Lord, one neither has age nor peace ever after;
invited by the ditch but in vain, he’d dare not stay...
the fire of heaven burns in one’s lips through the ages. And how long
Ask him, why not? maintaining his pace, he might reply:
is for the Lord a millennium? Only an fleeting instant.
he longs to meet the wife and a gentler death. That’s why.
But he’s insane, that poor man, because above the homes,
Poet:
since we have left them, only a scorching whirlwind roams.
You’re very young, I envy you, father! How could I presume
The walls are laid. The plum tree is broken. And the night
to measure my life by your awesome age? Already, my time
lurks bristling as a frightened, abandoned mongrel might.
wears me down -- like rushing rivers wear down the pebbles.
Oh, if I could believe that all things for which I yearn
exist beyond my heart, that there’s still home and return...
Prophet:
return! the old veranda, the peaceful hum of bees
Only you think so. I know your latest poetry. Anger
attracted by the cooling fresh plum jam in the breeze,
keeps you alive. The rage of prophets and poets is similar,
the still, late summer sunshine, the garden drowsing mute,
food and drink to the people! Those who want to survive
among the leaves the swaying voluptuous naked fruit,
can feed from it till the birth of the kingdom promised by that
and Fanni waiting for me, blonde by the russet hedge,
young pupil, the rabbi who fulfilled the law and our words.
while languidly the morning re-draws the shadow’s edge...
Come with me to announce that the hour is already near,
It may come true again -- the moon shines so round -- be wise!
that country about to be born. What might be, then, the Lord’s purpose?
Don’t leave me, friend, shout at me, shout! and I will arise!
Now you can see that it is that country. Let us set forth
and gather the people, bring your wife and cut two staffs,
for staffs make good companions for wanderers. Look, I’d like that one,
I like a firm, knotty hold on a staff that is strong and uneven.

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PICTURE POSTCARDS III

I The oxen slaver red saliva, people

pass urine mixed with blood, my squadron stands
The roar of cannon rolls from Bulgaria dense and broad, disorganized in filthy bunches. Death
resounds upon the mountain crest, then hesitates and ceases; blows overhead its cold, infernal breath.
the maned sky runs above; but recoils the neighing road;
and men and beasts are tangled, and wagon, thought and load.
You’re deep and constant in me despite this turbulence IV
and glowing in my conscience, forever still, intense
and silent like an angel when wondering he sees I tumble near his body. It turns over
destruction, or like beetles entombed in dying trees. already taut as string about to break.
Shot through the nape. You too will end up like that,
I mutter to myself. Lie calm. Be patient.
II
The flower of death unfolds in fear. I wait.
Blood mixed with dirt grows clotted on my ear.
Nine kilometres from here, look, the haystacks
I hear a soldier quip: He’ll get away yet.
and homes consumed in blaze,
(Oct. 31, 1944)
the peasants smoke in silence by the meadow
and huddle in a daze.
But here, the shepherdess leaves in the water
light ripples in her wake
and gently dipping down, her curly flock drinks
the clouds up in the lake.

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An Epilogue, by the Translator
Unmarked the moment when our forebears lost
our innocence to automated killing.
The prisoners' feet were kissed by winter frost,
their hunger ached. Some gave up hope, unwilling
to stumble on with pride and will run out.

They deemed a small delay a meagre prize,

fell gently and remained there calm and solemn,
unless one were to shout at them to rise,
awaiting death behind the marching column.
Some people had the stubborn strength to shout. THOMAS ORSZÁG-LAND, a Jewish survivor of the Hungarian
Holocaust, is a poet and award-winning foreign correspondent
They've left to us the throb of phantoms’ feet based in Budapest.
and monuments esteemed by every nation,
a world of wealthy customers to eat Versions of these poems have been published by Snakeskin, as well
the feast of plenty set by automation -- as Acumen, Candelabrum, Contemporary Review, Fire, The Interpreter’s
and now and then a fearful, halting doubt House, Maecenas Press, PEN International, Pennine Platform & The
Tern Press.
when warplanes scrape across the sky a scar
above our loved ones’ heads or when the telly
Translation ©Thomas Ország-Land, 2009.
brings for our entertainment from afar
a child with hunger bloated in the belly
and we have lost the voice or will to shout. E-mail [email protected]

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