Szabó Lőrinc: Semmiért Egészen

It's grotesque, I know
but it's true.
If you love me, live a life
of suicide, or close enough.
I don't care what the law
or the era demands;
inside rules the one
who was captive without,
and I can't be happy
unless of my own accord.

You cannot be mine while you are yours:
that is not love.
If you would love me as your own,
it may only be burdensome.
A bargain, however sacred, is a bargain; I want
something else: All for None!
All else is the quiet struggle
between ego;
I want more: that you be
an instrument of my fate.

I'm afraid of everyone, sickly
and worn;
I may want you even so,
but my faith is long gone.
To quiet the doubts that swirl
inside, there's no other cure:
Show me the joy of submission
and sacrifice
and that for me, you will stand
against all the world.

While you need just a moment,
alone, to yourself,
while you still dare to think of you,
to lament your fate,
while you're not yet as an object,
void of life and will,
you're no better
no more than all the rest,
like a stranger
you have nothing to do with me.

Those protected by law may be good
for a friend,
but be as a beast, outside
so that I can love you.
Like a lamp without its bulb,
don't live when I don't want
don't speak, don't cry, don't see
this cage indomitable;
and I will resolve in me
that you may forgive my tyranny.

Szabó Lőrinc: Werthert fordítva és mindig

For six weeks I marched to death
in the prison of your body
living through your “sorrows” minute by minute,
torturing me as if my own,
and so when the revolver rumbled
and they buried you, and “no priest attended”,
half-gone to the great beyond
I cried for you and me.

In six weeks we combined,
I knew what was to come, and precisely why.
Every word from which I built
you up, lived first in me;
What blood your maker once drew
From himself, he now took from mine,
and spoke of much, that those born after
he would not dare to tell.

It was a Sunday you died for me
upon a coffeehouse's marble table,
in poured through the square of the window
the ringing golden afternoon,
the gold sky... how I would've loved
to wander and forget!
But I only sat helpless, as though one
keeping vigil over their departed.
[...]

great events by feeble instruments

forensics found her knuckling her halo as one readies a bat
when unfamiliar footsteps ring out in the night,
eager for anything and nowhere to fall
the hand she raised will be the first they cut off.

if she had just made like a mermaid circling the shallows,
she could've been an exhibit, silent and enduring.
real ones have talons of fresh glass
and dash your skull against the shoal.
real ones will be anything but.

no, had she just made like a princess and put on that damned dress,
she could’ve rotted in the tower, waiting for you!
real ones grind you beneath their heel,
demanding the world meet them where they stand.
sweet, imperious, and never satisfied

she staggers up from the floor.
it's not enough to captivate,
i need proof. a thousand good or a thousand evil
whichever happens first.

tomorrow the machine will tear her apart,
cut and repurpose, and good homes for each
fallen cardigan like tides rippling behind her,
or a pearl-brocade train.

an instant

Would that the air were as honey,
that you drew a twisting arc
like bees, or seeds of maple,
slow and cheerful in your fall,
that someone was there to catch you.

That childish urge, that reverie,
or maybe just an animal that eats
and eats
and eats,
seeing danger in every flicker of light.

It tramples on, never once thinking
that the gilded road home could be
ash and mud. Never once thinking
of finite oaks, finite leaves, finite falls,
    reaching out an empty palm.

untitled

–They say a name is a wish,
parent to child.
It's true; I'm a dreamer. And you
still pure?

We laugh you out of the room,
three, four times.
It's three days later that I think
failure suits you best.

Any blood but your own
will surely dry.
Any but your own.

They say peonies bloom red with shame.
What were you punished for?
A boy of ten, three halves dead
dug himself deep in the ground.

Oil-black mud on your tongue
and no below.
You nurtured them like your own,
sour tomatoes and fresh cucumber.

The lilies that took root
would surely die.
Those that took root, anyway.

(They say a mother lion, seeing
the last of her young
eats him to start anew–)

keramit

we stand on the shoulders of giants, command their great big hands to tamp down the earth. you say you still can't be buried here.
if you leave, who remembers? our marks are so small, the white trim on water rippling, the stain on utopia.
cut down the trees with love. carve matches with love, leave out the phosphor with love, hold it in front of your eye. when your hair catches, that's the price of curiosity. the headless horseman, borrowed: see them ride out and seethe with hate, sour bile searing your tongue slowly.