Light within the Shade: Eight Hundred Years of Hungarian Poetry

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g yörg y pe t r i | 217 Collapse No, there was no explosion, only collapse. Who grinds himself up inside who deceives himself and deceives others who terrorizes with illusions has voicelessly subsided. Can we still think— one provoked by doubt from the beginning, giving up the right to doubt, the idiotic guard of the putrid bathwater, of the water in which a baby had been— can he think of liberation? Can he even imagine it, who’s seen human bodies dismembering softly separating like after lovemaking, softer than when our flesh will flake and fall from our bones? Only it fell apart so voicelessly: nails slid softly into a rotten beam, bricks of mud and dust, that dry porous construction submitted, as to the depraved bonds of perversion, when what sense does it make to resist?— and the earth is flogged with mines and bombardment. Absurd condescension beats on the empty air, like the rain, the rain, the rain. 218 | Light within the Shade No, there was no explosion, just collapse. so long, so long, jostling, settles the wet thick dust. Or is there nothing but that jostling? that wet swelling scuffle? The deconstruction of a world. 1967 ...