Light within the Shade: Eight Hundred Years of Hungarian Poetry

To Freedom

202 | Light within the Shade To Freedom Cathedral! You are full of wondrousness! What ripply-pleated angels! Lovely glances! Seen from here the soles of a giantess, their heads pin-like in their far radiances. Beyond the dome flares further scenery, Between the columns flames a painted sky: What if I disbelieved, but you should be, or you were not, but a believer I? Remains of God! Your yearning dragged me yet. You bore me now. Mad me, I don’t chase after you. Some friends of mine just starved. I mention it because you evidently did not know. What last straw did they chew, upon their knees? With what mouths, set in what unfleshly skulls? —You might have spared for them a cup of peas, you might have managed some small miracles. I would have liked to see their mouths once more, their warm chins, that were shattered in their blood— enough; I yearn for Rome, its gardens, where I would be fed with thick and wondrous food. Give a banana! Meat! Be the world’s teat! At night, give Naples, Switzerland at dawn! Give vibrant air above the flowering mead, false lying lover, you for whom I yearn! Give a balloon! Faith! Heavenly images! Break your own law! Give us yourself instead! Don’t let the greedy eat the people’s cheese, Bring on the resurrection of the dead! ág n es n em es nag y | 203 —A peony stands upon my tabletop, its beauty self-substantial as a gem, its lovely petals richly frilling up in double volutes, crowding round the stem. If there might be some sense of adoration, before this on my buckling knees I’d fall: pin but on this your glorious vindication, for it is beauty, life, and has no soul. 1942–1946 ...