Light within the Shade: Eight Hundred Years of Hungarian Poetry

Will You Appear?

220 | Light within the Shade s z a b o l c s vá r a d y (19 43 –) Will You Appear? How crystalline this pure dawn sky! All is as if composed in space by some inspired genius, by some transubstantiating grace. The dawn redeems this rust-gnawed grille, the sun is blazing clear and strong, and resonating to its trill, the crumbing stucco joins the song. Thus I in outworn mode began my poem, my day—and I can’t say how far I’ll get, want to, or can. And you, will you appear halfway? As usual, coward, I would dodge. I hope this antiquated span, this comfortable measured trudge may help at least to make it scan. Or better—dear Lord!—should I say, I’m rocking in its melody? Long have my ears preserved its way, heard as if through eternity. Perhaps it may sweep or wash away this squeezing thing, I know not what, that has not left me day on day, leaping in shock from chest to gut; Perhaps it will dissolve, undo, even perhaps come out with it— So sing out, ancient music, who thus match the sunblaze opposite! sz a bolcs vá r ady | 221 How long it’s been, how long I’ve yearned to lose myself, in you to dwell, exchange my cumbrous being, and melt in the immaterial. Since you’ve been stuck in me, you shy and hesitant forbidden love, each side of me, each sharp-crossed I, has woken to its other half. Still the sun beams. As old poems say, the dawn, so crystalline and clear, waves back—and, heavenly grace, this day are you too going to appear? 1982–1985 ...