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192 | Light within the Shade Razglednicas* 1. Rolling from Bulgaria the brutal cannonade slams at the ranges, to hesitate and fade; men and beasts and carts and thoughts are jammed into one, neighing the road rears up, the maned sky will run. And you’re the only constant in the changing and the mess: you shine on eternal beneath my consciousness; mute as an angel wondering at the catastrophe, or the beetle of burial from his hole in a dead tree. In the mountains.** August 30, 1944 2. At nine kilometers: the pall of burning hayrick, homestead, farm. At the field’s edge: the peasants, silent, smoking pipes against the fear of harm. Here: a lake ruffled only by the step of a tiny shepherdess, where a white cloud is what the ruffled sheep drink in their lowliness. Cservenka.*** October 6, 1944 3. The oxen drool saliva mixed with blood. Each one of us is urinating blood. The squad stands about in knots, stinking, mad. Death, hideous, is blowing overhead. Mohács. October 24, 1944 4.† I fell beside him and his corpse turned over, tight already as a snapping string. Shot in the neck. “And that’s how you’ll end too,” m i k lós r adnó t i | 193 I whispered to myself; “Lie still; no moving. Now patience flowers in death.” Then I could hear “Der springt noch auf,”†† above, and very near. Blood mixed with mud was drying on my ear. Szentkirályszabadja. October 31, 1944 *Razglednica means “picture postcard” in Serbo-Croatian. These are the last four poems Radnóti inscribed in his address book on the death march. **Radnóti’s camp was located in the mountains. ***The German guards killed 1,000 to 1,200 Jewish servicemen at Cservenka. †This is the last of the poems Radnóti composed on the death march. ††In German, “He is still moving.” ...

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