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ATTILA JOZSEF Consciousness i Dawn unties the sky from the world and from her pure, soft voice the bugs, the children swirl out to the sunshine; there is no mist in the air, and shimmery lightness flutters! The leaves are tiny butterflies that flew upon the trees during the night. ii I saw blue, red, yellow daubed pictures in my dream and I felt, this is order, not a speck of dust messed them up. Now my dream circulates through my limbs like twilight, and the iron world is the order. a moon wakes the day in me, and if night arrives--a sun shines inside. iii I'm skinny, I eat bread sometimes, among these shallow, garrulous souls I'm searching, without pay, for more certainty than in the roll of dice. Lush meat doesn't caress my mouth, nor does any child my heart-- even a smart cat can't catch mice inside and outside at the same time. iv Like a pile of chopped wood, the world sprawls one piece on top of another, each grips, presses, holds one thing onto the other and thus, every one is determined. What doesn't exist, possesses a bush, what will be, is the flower; what exists, falls into pieces. v At the freighttrain station I lay flat beside the tree's trunk like a piece of silence: gray weeds touched my mouth, raw, wierdly sweet. Deadly still, I watched the guard, intent on his senses, and his shadow in the silent wagons jumping stubbornly over the dewy coal . vi So suffering is here inside, but out there is the explanation. Your wound is the world--burns, fiery. And you feel the fever in your soul. You're a prisoner, til your heart rebels-- You'll be free, if, for your pleasure, you won't build the kind of a house that a landlord takes over. vii From under the evening I looked up into the cogwheels of the sky-- the loom of the past was weaving a law out of the threads of glittering accident; again, through the haze of my dream, I looked up to the sky, and I saw the seam of the law kept coming unravelled all over. viii Silence was listening - a clock struck. You should visit your youth; there among damp cement block walls you can imagine a little bit of freedom-- I thought. And as I'm standing up, the stars, the Big Dipper, sparkle the way bars shine above a silent prison cell. ix I heard the iron crying, I heard the rain laughing. I saw how the past split apart, and how only illuisons can be forgotten; and how I know nothing, but to love, bending under my burdens-- why must we construct weapons from you, golden consciousness! x The adult man is he who has no mother and father in his heart, who knows that life is something extra thrown in beside death and, like a found object, anytime it can be given back-- that's why he treasures it, he who is neither god, nor priest, neither for himself, nor to anyone. xi I did see happiness once, it was tender, blonde and must have weighed four-hundred pounds. Its curly smile tottered on the rigorous grass of the farm yard. It plunked down in a soft, lukewarm puddle; it winked, grunted in my direction. I still see how waveringly the light fumbled among its ringlets. xii I live by the tracks. Lots of trains come and go and I watch how the shiny windows fly by in the powdery-darkness. This is how the lit up days speed through the eternal night; I'm standing in every cabin-light, leaning on my elbow in silence.
from Attila Jozsef Transparent Lion: Selected Poems translated from the Hungarian by Michael Castro and Gabor G. Gyukics, (2006, Los Angeles, Green Integer Publishing.
poetryREPAIRs: Concourse or confluence of people at or in a place; resort, frequent or habitual going; making one's way; to arrive; to dwell; to heal, to cure, to recover; to renew; (AND!) to fix to original condition - Oxford English Dictionary.
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