Light within the Shade: Eight Hundred Years of Hungarian Poetry

The Last of Seven

at t i l a józ se f | 155 The Last of Seven Mortal dweller, may your mother bear you seven times together! Once within a house that’s burning, once in floods, the ice floes churning, once in bedlam, yelling, yearning, once in a wheatfield’s soft turning, once in cloisters bell-intoning, once stied with pigs in grunts and groaning. What though these six cry out to heaven? You shall be the last of seven! If your enemy come to hurt you, seven there be who won’t desert you: one who starts his day off ready, one who’s on his tour of duty, one who takes no pay for teaching, one cast onto the waves, beseeching, one, a seed of forests splendid, one, bellowing ancestors defended when all his tricks could not get even— you shall be the last of seven! If you’re seeking for a woman, seven seek her love in common. One who spends his heart upon her, one who pays his debts of honor, one who plays the musing dreamer, one who gropes her skirt, the schemer, one knows where the hook is hidden, one treads her kerchief, that’s forbidden,— as flies buzz meat, their goal and heaven! You shall be the last of seven! If you’d make a poet’s living, seven will work the poem-giving. 156 | Light within the Shade One builds towns of marble vision, one born sleeping, a magician, one who measures heaven’s gutters, one whose name the logos utters, one who carves his soul a tiller, one vivisector and rat-killer. Four scientists, two heroes even— you shall be the last of seven! And if it falls as it is written, seven to the grave are smitten: one dandled at a milk-filled bosom, one grasping at a stony bosom, one who scorns the empty platters, one ally of the poor, in tatters, one worn to shreds by work and action, one gazer at the moon’s perfection: may you share the tomb of heaven! You shall be the last of seven! 1932 ...