Light within the Shade: Eight Hundred Years of Hungarian Poetry

Dream of the One

lőr i nc sz a bó | 137 Dream of the One You being you and he being he, his interest, not yours, he serves, truth just a set of formulae, or some state of the nerves; and since the outside world won’t please, and since the masses grant no victories, and I’d no say upon the world’s decrees, it’s time for me to liberate myself from all of you, to loose the bonds, go free. What am I waiting for so humbly here, to glimpse what future times will do? time’s running, and all life is dear, all that’s alive is true. Either I’m sick, or you are, only one; and you tell me I shouldn’t watch that gun, whether it’s love or hate that makes you run, and I’m the prey? if I’m the understanding one, where does that leave me, pray? No, no! No, I won’t be just a thread in someone else’s tangled skein, giving the guards respect and sympathy, feeling my jailer’s pain! He who could stand it long since got away, yes, though he walks through daggers every day. The world and I, the two of us, must stay stuck in this cage; as self-concerned as is the world itself, I stand right at the center of my stage. See, my heart, the lock is opening, freeing our intelligence, 138 | Light within the Shade which paints itself so cunningly with bars of our pretense. What is a thousand outside, is but one within! Who’s ever seen that fish’s scale or fin that no net, mesh untorn, could yet contain nor filter out? Is this forbidden? Some forbid it. Sin? Oh certainly, if it gets out. Within us are no borders or details, nothing’s forbidden; it’s just us—mind and soul, not good, not bad, alone, hidden. Hide deeper in yourself! There it will be; that wanton reckless dawning, huge and free, the dream that flows so endlessly as in the acid salt of tears and blood we taste the memory of our dark mother, who’s the sea. Into the ocean, back forever! Only there can we be free! From the Many, from what’s outside, we’ll never get what we need, to be. Bargain with the masses if we must; truth like ashes turns to dust; our homeland is a One that will not trust itself to be shared out; dream then, if we can, of that true Oneness: dream it beyond doubt. 1931 ...