To My Dead | Third Day Unceasingly

To My Dead

I cooked liver, placing it on a bed of lemon leaves

and fine spices, so its fragrance would entice you here,

my fleeing dead. Did you ever know the death

of the heart, did you know thirst more torturous

and helpless than the desire of the landlocked for the sea?

Did you know that yellow decay kneading the lungs

together like a paper lantern, hollowing out a wounded ditch

in the chest? You could be more exhausted than the water-bearing

donkey, the camel with calf. Come, sit down

by the table, and while eating, look at

the houses scattered on the hillside, the sky, the cabbage

leaf, look at the plunging falcon, the women’s

hips, the jug set out on the windowsill, as if you were all

cut from living flesh, as if the kiss would never end, as if you could

embrace this, make in one with the light, as if the world were nothing

but pollution preparing to break free of God’s embrace.

Third Day Unceasingly

All of those worn-out

good-for-nothing objects,

the two rusty pruning shears,

the torn jute bag,

spade handle, wooden ladder,

the spilled-out sands

now turned to stone,

the nails and the saw,

snake of green plastic,

the wading pool’s hole-punctured siding,

yes, that too, and by then

it was really good for nothing,

and all those useless pictures,

as we idiotically scrambled for an umbrella,

caught by the winter storm

on the road that led to the sea,

the wheatfields of Umbria,

and the tram, clattering, that stopped

in front of the candy store, and started off again

like a heavyweight boxer

struggling to his feet after being knocked down,

and that decaying wooden bridge

—we trotted beneath it in rubber boots—

the raindrops like strings of pearls, scattering everywhere.

All the things I should have taken care of,

for them too—for my dead:

Magda, Péter, Szilárd, my father.

I don’t understand why they’re not sitting

with me now here in the kitchen,

why they’re not asking me for a glass of water.

I should have been taking care

of their voices, the warmth of their hands,

making sure the door was closed as they left;

I should have built a house for them,

a house for all those worn-out

good-for-nothing items,

all those pictures

so they won’t get battered by the wind,

nor torn by snow,

the sun will not scorch

nor oblivion bury them,

and they won’t stand around

solitary, just there, outside, stamping their feet,

for the third day while it unceasingly rains.

“Halottaimhoz” from Éjszaka, utazás. Bratislava: Kalligram, 2011.

“Harmadnapja egyfolytában” from Jelenkor: Irodalmi és művészeti folyóirat. Pécs: Vol. LXV, No. 1, Jan. 2022, pp. 9-10.

Image by Thomas Colligan.