Featured White Papers
- PCI DSS therapy for the smaller retailer (McAfee)
- Hosted CRM comparison guide (Inside CRM)
- Hosted CRM buyer's guide (Inside CRM)
Content provided in partnership with
Elegy for My Village - The Elegy of Nagyszoros - Poem
Literary Review, Summer, 2000 by Arpad Farkas
The throat of my village, oh, Nagyszoros, the prince with the wooden sword I was inside you, a giggle bubbling up to heaven, the little son of crying, and the heart of my teeny-tiny village beating in its throat; the tickling vegetable fragrance of suppers, the carefree need as it spread its patience over the handful of sky, the gardens, the porches. Nagyszoros, oh, Nagyszoros, from inside you my great-grandfathers tore themselves out at blood-red dawns, those busy ants, you swallowed, you vomited wagons loaded with manure, with their wheels shackled and with gung-ho cracking of whips they bled into the open, cussing palled into prayer until, through you from the depths, it reached the light-- The throat of my village, oh, Nagyszoros, the prince with the wooden sword I was once inside you, the one who climbs up on the vines and duels with the thistles and swings from the maples or from stray straws anywhere, your Adam's apple danced under my bare feet to the beat of church bells: a shadow of the steeple-top-- your games turned me wild, you clawed my nails sharp, you tickled me into a little lad, and then love came to call for me, yes it did, in the image of Zsuzsanna-- Indeed she came, Zsuzsanna, the wee fair beauty among the beauties of Szoros, between her toes the mud was squirting, her sky-purplish skin glistened from blackberries, she trudged behind the wagon, picking her nose, coming closer and closer, as if out of a fairy tale, her cute little ankles were washed by the foam of horse urine flooding the ruts in the road, there she came, skipping over crusty cow dung, with a stray straw in her golden locks, she suddenly turned into a queen just so that a king I might become-- Zsuzsanna's hair then did not yet have color, lips she didn't have, her eyes did not look like anything. With tiny beads and mud balls my darling pelted me, I grabbed her thick hair, her tears welled up, and I got scared, promised her little birds, with golden feathers, I led her into a hollow covered with tall grass, to titter and giggle among the mint and heather. Hollering farmers drove by in their whipping wagons, and look: whispers were crawling under the shrubs --we glistened at each other with the glow of fireflies like those who have no inkling of the secret yet they fear it already. When the coast was clear she bounced up ready to flee, but I--who knows why?-- begged her: let's play: it might start raining! And to protect her I lay down on her tummy. I started to stir with themovements of mating stallions and bulls I'd seen, and her pretty eyes widened into questioning circles, her butterfly breath flitted against the frightened ferns-- my god, what gasps! How could I suspect that that voice would grow up, transfigured like baby whimper into sobs? ... And peace into silence the wheezing draft stirs up sweeping with it life and dreams up to heaven--and myself to this globescape--, and the throat of my tiny village, clogged up by ruins, can swallow no more-- At the edge of Nagyszoros the drowning life still sends out an afterglow and, just for a flag, Zsuzsanna's teeny plaid skirt, the holy banner of our one-time purity keeps flapping-slapping up here--
Translated from the Hungarian by Paul Sohar
Arpad Farkas is a Hungarian poet living in Transylvania
COPYRIGHT 2000 Fairleigh Dickinson University
COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group
