The cottages with boarded-up windows stand in waist-high ragweed and crumple into themselves faint from the smell of the bleeding hay in spite of the wet compresses wrapped on their foreheads by ossified moss and lichen. The wind taps out an October litany on the slats of the dismantled fence, on the xylophone of advent in the runaway yard, and it's hard to tell whether it's god's blind eye or the devil's hand squinting from behind dust-and-grime-shackled glass panes at the overgrown paths where the skunk cabbage trips over dried-out lianas, and dusk falls flat on its face-- And will never end. A lair of moths, under the mulberry-spotted eaves where rancid tranquility sleeps... Oh, lost points of the horizon, a boarded-up cottage stands before you like a man with plastered eyes in the wilderness-- has no idea which way to turn, no one to guide him... Oh, you doors without latches, collection boxes of muteness, the cracks of the heaving corner-beams go unanswered... Oh, you sightless windows, you'll never watch those departing, dried-up begonia branches behind you like shriveled-up optic nerves-- they can no longer even look inside or feel the pain.
*István Ferenczes, born in 1941, has lived all his life in Transylvania. He lives in Miercurea-Ciuc (Csikszereda) where he publishes SzekelyfUold, a Hungarian cultural magazine. He has published several volumes of poetry. His style ranges from traditional to experimental.*
Here's one from Transylvania:
ReplyDeleteBoarded-Up Windows
The cottages with boarded-up windows stand in waist-high ragweed
and crumple into themselves faint from the smell of the bleeding hay
in spite of the wet compresses wrapped on their foreheads by ossified moss
and lichen. The wind taps out an October litany on the slats of the
dismantled fence, on the xylophone of advent in the runaway yard,
and it's hard to tell whether it's god's blind eye or the devil's hand
squinting from behind dust-and-grime-shackled glass panes at
the overgrown paths where the skunk cabbage trips over dried-out lianas,
and dusk falls flat on its face--
And will never end. A lair of moths, under the mulberry-spotted eaves
where rancid tranquility sleeps...
Oh, lost points of the horizon, a boarded-up cottage stands before you
like a man with plastered eyes in the wilderness--
has no idea which way to turn, no one to guide him...
Oh, you doors without latches, collection boxes of muteness,
the cracks of the heaving corner-beams go unanswered...
Oh, you sightless windows, you'll never watch those departing,
dried-up begonia branches behind you like shriveled-up optic
nerves--
they can no longer even look inside or feel the pain.
*István Ferenczes, born in 1941, has lived all his life in Transylvania. He lives in Miercurea-Ciuc (Csikszereda) where he publishes SzekelyfUold, a Hungarian cultural magazine. He has published several volumes of poetry. His style ranges from traditional to experimental.*
That's a nice, thanks for the poem!
ReplyDelete