Light within the Shade: Eight Hundred Years of Hungarian Poetry

Evening Questioning

m i h á ly ba bi t s | 95 m i h á ly b a b i t s (18 83 – 19 4 1) Evening Questioning On such an evening time, soft coverlet of velvet black a giant nurse has set and smoothly spread upon this cherished world so carefully that every grass-stem pearled stands up unruffled under this slow veil and flower petals, wrinkleless, glow pale and even the pied, fragile butterflies lose no enamel from their rainbow wings, and all the much-loved planet resting lies under this light veil’s velvet shadowings, not feeling aught of weight or of oppression but covered gently as a prized possession: then wheresoever in the world you wander, or in your sad brown room behind the glass, or in a quiet café you watch and ponder as one by one they light the sun-bright gas; or tired out, with your dog upon a hill, you see through branches the slack moon stand still; or on the road, dusty and overdone, your dozing cabbie sleepily drives on; or on a ship’s deck, dizzy with the heaving, or in the thrumming carriage of a train, or in a foreign city idly roving you stop upon the corner of a lane to watch, pleased, how the distant avenues make double threads of lamp-flame, twos by twos; or here, at Riva, in the water-city, where the matte opal mirror splits the rays, you, musing, cry for lost felicity, seek back for memories of former days, the ache of your lost youth, which like the embered 96 | Light within the Shade image of a magic lamp both is and is not, ever warm and still remembered, an unborn treasured burden, painful bliss; your head may then, heavy with memories, hang down toward the marble ground for this: roaming amid such beauty and delight you will, despite these gifts, in cowardice think this: why all this beauty? in despite, orphaned you will ask what is it all for? why the silk waters, the pied marble floor? why the soft evening, this winged coverlet? why the dark branches, why the hill? and why the seas wherein no seedsman sows? and why the ditches, and the droughts, and in the sky the clouds, those maiden-sad Danaïdes, the burning stone of Sisyphus, the sun? why the past times, why all those memories? why the lamp-lightings, why the lazy moon? why time, that ever seeks its end in vain? or take the grass blade, tiny as a feather: why does the grass grow, when it needs must wither? why does it die, when it will grow again? 1909 ...