Light within the Shade: Eight Hundred Years of Hungarian Poetry

Thirst

ág n es n em es nag y | 201 á g n e s n e m e s n a g y (19 2 2 – 19 9 1) Thirst How to say it? The word can’t find my mouth: thirst for you mutes my tongue with drouth. —Were I a pitcher-plant you’d fall in, lie mired in my body’s fragrance, quite sucked dry. And so I would possess your warm brown skin, your nervous hand that guards you even in that final toppling moment, saying then: see, I am still myself, I still remain. Mine then your arm, bent over my arm there, mine the black gleaming feathers of your hair, that swish as if a wind, swishing with me, in swinging landscapes, shining endlessly. And so I would drink in your melting flesh thick like the tropics, sweet and dense and fresh, your magic fragrance, shuddering from the mage, the horsetail and the ancient meadow-sage. And as your weightless soul now dwells in me, (above you like a lantern floating free), all this, greedy, unsated, I’d devour, as if my flesh were a carnivorous flower. Is there no more? then peace I must despair. I love you. You love me. There’s no repair. 1942–1946 ...