Light within the Shade: Eight Hundred Years of Hungarian Poetry

Blood Kin

140 | Light within the Shade g y u l a i l ly é s (19 0 2 – 19 83) Blood Kin I’d want no more than for three days to gaze Only upon the shady valley of your eyes, your brows, the thick sedge of your lashes, where the wild glint of a native water plays, the nimble minnow-dance of your intent that glitters, teases, in its element— I’d want no more than this, three days together: dumbly to gaze at one first, then the other. And three whole days I’d spend on nothing more than to watch wordlessly that curvature: the soft hint of your breasts beneath your dress, the star that has drowsed off on its caress, and, stretching on the silk a spoke of light, readies itself to glow on my blind night— I’d want no more than this, three days together: dumbly to gaze at one first, then the other. And it had been enough for three new days only to let my eyes go sip and graze the beautiful twinned knees’ tightbuddedness that flaunt yet, clumsy, hide their bashfulness, a bright portal whose double wings conspire, perhaps, or egg each other on to flower— I’d want no more than this, three days together: dumbly to gaze at one first, then the other. In the mild heat, that from your body flowed, I would have sat, where your soft flesh-light glowed, a convalescent patient in the sun observing how its warmth dissolves the pain all tingling from his poor chest where it dwelt, g y u l a i lly é s | 141 how happily might this flesh also melt into the cloudscape of a brighter sky, which in itself is its own lullaby— As if I were your child, in your child’s place, when I embrace you: thus I would embrace. So what love only gives in time, I’d hear— those solace-giving words—right now and here. As brother sister, so I clasped you tight, tasting that ancient yearning which absolves the sin itself, and fell, that first strange night into the sleep where being itself dissolves. 1932 ...