You Were Still the Sun's There, and: Summer, Haloed, and: Sunday Before Christmas, and: E.K.'s Will

YOU WERE STILL THE SUN'S THERE / Sándor Csoöri translated from the Hungarian by Jascha Kessler with Maria Körösy I go north, up to the mountains, to look at Matra's russet woods again: the blu°, yellow, flame-red butterflies' campground near the spring. You were still intact there: a glowing masterpiece beneath the leaves. Death's thunderous sting fell into the abyss and not on you. I go to look at that abyss, the shadow of black flowers that rims it. And I go on to that slow stream of stones by Bearbone Rock. You were still the sun's there: it shone through your skirt, through you, through the haze of your pleasure and flesh; I go higher, to the trees, to the mulberry's myriad eyes, because I want to look at what looked at you, and what of you is not buried yet. 294 · The Missouri Review SUMMER, HALOED / Sándor Csoöri translated from the Hungarian by Jascha Kessler with Maria Körösy A hornet flies into my room, June's angel, the curtain's yellowed by it; the room's four walls, forests, and wheatfields pass before the sky's windowglass; summer strolls in front of my mirror, naked to the waist. The radiance of slick clay around her head, a halo of birds, and your face's halo that the June shower rinsed free of dust and death. A tree outside, and a humming engine, the whistle of an otherworldly airplane— oh, the big trips are over just as you are somewhere, too; only this is left: summer, hornet, and gold streaming about me, cooling, the dulled radiance of this world. The Missouri Review · 295 SUNDAY BEFORE CHRISTMAS / Sándor Csoöri translated from the Hungarian by Jascha Kessler with Maria Körösy Gold Sunday . . . What shall I buy for you? The sky's open, shops are open: a little more life, if I could, with the scent of pine-needles, because Christmas is coming. Some sunny days out of the year and the big, unrelenting rain of winter to sweep me into the earth with you. When you were still alive you made the chestnut's leaves kneel around my head, there was no death— and oh what that ghastly change of place has done to me! you're nowhere now and death's circling the dim rounds of the green jelly jars, crawling out of my books like a starved ant on the table cloth, darkness tagging along with it rage, shame an elbowing void approaching, your shroud and not your nightgown— God, now I know why everyone goes mad who's touched by death, who tastes a chill strand of hair on the lips! You make me talk to myself down Martirok Street, the acid snow dripping from the eaves into my mouth drop by drop as on the condemned. 296 · The Missouri Review E.K.'s WILL / Sândor Csoöri translated from the Hungarian by Jascha Kessler with Maria Körösy Bury me in the overcoat if I die it's very long, it covers my ankles because even in the grass of summer I'm cold, cold to the roots of my hair The Missouri Review · 297 ...