Light within the Shade: Eight Hundred Years of Hungarian Poetry

Paris

m i k lós r adnó t i | 187 Paris Where the Boul’ Mich’ meets the Rue Cujas the corner slopes perceptibly. Lovely wild youth, I have not left you, your voice, like echoes in a gallery, a shaft, beats through the caverns of the heart. At Rue Monsieur le Prince the baker plied his art. In the park, leftwards, one of the tall trees has shimmered yellow to the sky as if it felt the chill of Fall. Liberty, long-thighed nymph, O lovely shy one clad in your dusk-goldening chemise, are you still hiding in the veiled, the shrouded trees? The drums of summer marched and beat, sweated, and raised the dust upon the road. Cool vapors followed; soft and sweet from both sides now a subtle fragrance flowed. Noon was full summer; cool in the evening with rainy brow the autumn came a-visiting. I took my pleasures where I found them, like a child, or like an erudite old sage who knows quite well the world is round. How green I was! my beard was snowy white. I wandered where I would and no one frowned. Then I descended to the torrid underground. Where are you now, echoing metro stations: CHÂTELET-CITÉ-ST. MICHEL-ODÉON! DENFERT-ROCHEREAU sounding like imprecations? Maps flowered on the dirty walls. How long, how long! I cry out. Hush, I’m listening: that smell of sweat and ozone starts its whispering. 188 | Light within the Shade And O the nights! The nightly wandering from the far outskirts to the Quartier! And shall the strangely clouded dawn yet bring to Paris once again those pales of grey when I’d undress for bed so sleepily, dazed and still drunk with writing poetry? Had I but strength, O would I might go back against the heavy current of my fate! The vile café downstairs employed a black cat that climbed the rooves to copulate. And shall I hear again that yowl and croon? That was the very moment that I learned how great a din there was when Noah swam beneath the moon. August 14, 1943 ...