Light within the Shade: Eight Hundred Years of Hungarian Poetry

For My Birthday

at t i l a józ se f | 167 For My Birthday Upon my thirty-second year— what a surprise, this poem here, knickyknacky : a little gift with which I say, lurking alone in this café: happy happy. Thirty-two years just blew away, I never made ten doits a day: hungry, Hungary. A pedagogue I might have been, not this pen-busting, might-have-been, saddie laddie. But no; Herr College Chancellor showed me the outside of the door: mocktor Doktor. It was a short sharp shock for sure, my father-poem got its cure; his word and sword, that saved the fatherland from me, evoked my spirit and set free its name and flame. “As long as I have any say you’ll not teach here a single day”— 168 | Light within the Shade bibblebabble . If Mr. Antal Horger’s pleased our poet’s grammar-study’s ceased— folly’s jollies— no high school, but a nation I, although he like not, by and by shall teach, shall teach. April 11, 1937 ...