Attila József Selected Poems

By Attilla Jozsef

Award-winning translator Peter Hargitai celebrates 100 years of Attila Jzsef (1905?1937) in this new selection of 100 poems. His previous selection, Perched On Nothing's Branch (1986), enjoyed a remarkable run of five editions and won for him the Academy of American Poets' Landon Translation Award. His translation of Attila Jzsef is listed among the world classics cited by Harold Bloom in The Western Canon. Praise for Peter Hargitai's translation of Attila Jzsef: "These grim, bitter, iron-cold poems emerge technically strong, spare and authentic in English, and they are admirably contemporary in syntax."
-MAY SWENSON
in Citation for the Academy of American Poets "A rich nuanced translation by Peter Hargitai. These poems are ageless, mirroring the human conditions and focusing in humankind's existential loneliness."
-MAXINE KUMIN "I have long thought of Attila Jzsef as one of the great poets of the century, a tragic realist whose work beautifully redeemed the unbearable conditions of the life to which history condemned him. These new translations by Peter Hargitai will be welcomed by Jzsef's admirers and will certainly add to their number."
-DONALD JUSTICE "[Other] translations of Jzsef's work are stiff and academic, whereas Peter Hargitai's versions are colloquial and emotionally charged as the originals. Reading them one lapses into the silence that attends the reception of all great poetry."
-DAVID KIRBY

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jun 13, 2005
• ISBN: 9780595800940

Attilla Jozsef

Attila József (1905?1937) A towering, tragic poet in modern 20th Century world literature. An orphan and a social outcast whose innovative raw imagery captured the plight of suffering humanity during his chaotic age. He ended his life by throwing himself under the wheels of a freight train. Benedetto Croce called him, ?One of the greatest poets of the poor and of humanity.?

Book preview

ATTILA JOZSEF

SELECTED

POEMS

Translation by Peter Hargitai

iUniverse, Inc.

New York Lincoln Shanghai

Attila Jozsef Selected Poems

Copyright © 2005 by Peter Hargitai

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or

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ISBN-13: 978-0-595-35614-0 (pbk)

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Acknowledgements

Apalachee Quarterly: Bitter, Nothing, Young Lobster, Red Lobster; Blue Unicorn: Mamma; Forum: Ten Poets of the Western Reserve: Stones; Palmetto Review: A Transparent Lion, The Bellman of the Lake’s Tower, Drunk on the Tracks, Sorrow, Look; Prairie Schooner: Weary Man; Sands: Eagle, Paris, Smoke, Diamonds; Translation Review: I Am Not the One Shouting. Some of the poems previously published in the book Perched On Nothing’s Branch by Apalachee Press in l986, 1987, 1989 and 1993, and by White Pine Press in 1999, appear in these selected poems in altered form.

The publication of this book was made possible,

in part, by the FIG Program of Florida

International University.

for Mancika

Image306.EPS

Contents

ONE Son of Earth and Oil

Hungary is Far Away

Elegy

Winter Night

Glassmakers

The Final Battle

By the Danube

Welcoming Thomas Mann

Woodcutter

On the City’s Edge

Fire!

Ode

Hang On!

Air!

The Dog

Night in the Ghetto

I AM NOT THE ONE SHOUTING

The Eagle

The Last Warrior

TWO Sons and Lovers

Mamma

Too Late for a Eulogy

My Mother Just Died

Strength Song

Autumn

Without Knocking

Biblical

Rising at Dawn Like the Bakers

Kiszombor Song

For Mancika

You’re Such a Fool

You run

Judit

Spring Mud

Insects

Sleep Silently

Night

You Made Me a Child

The Secrets of the Heart

My Love

Sacrilege

I Wait For You

THREE Son of Man

The Lord is High

Young Lobster, Red Lobster

Dance of Flames

Moonlight

Unloading Lumber

Bethlehem

Spring Suddenly From the Tide

I’m Serious

Attila Jozsef

About a Poet

Sometimes Islands

Now I See

Nesting in the Forest

The Man Spoke

FOUR Perched on Nothing’s Branch

A Tree Here, a Tree There

With all My Heart

On My Birthday

Sit, Stand, Kill, and Die

You Come With a Stick

Monument on a Mountaintop

Medallions

Paris

Stones

Everything Is Old

My Net

Leaves on a Tree

Diamonds

Psalms are forever.

Yellow Grass

Look

Soapy Water

Sorrow

I May Just Vanish

The Sky Is Ablaze

Consciousness

Smoke

Bitter

I Threw It

The Ant

Rain

I’m Leaving Everything

Perched on Nothing’s Branch

FIVE At the Sand’s Wet Edge

Bathing in the Sea

Shadows

Longing Under the Moon

The Bellman of the Lake’s Tower

Hearsay

My Funeral

Balatonszarszo

On Glasses

Summoning the Lion

A Transparent Lion

The Smoke

It’s Only the Sea

Freight Trains

A Summer Afternoon

Autumn Dusk

Loneliness

Drunk on the Tracks

Nothing

Weary Man

Dew

About Attila Jozsef

About the Translator

ONE

Son of Earth and Oil

H

ungary is Far Away

Hungary is far away.

Hungary is beyond the mountains.

She comes only when blackbirds sing,

she comes wearing next to nothing,

she comes at dawn

in light,

when the wind is warmer.

I hear her clear song,

I hear the anvil and the hammer.

Lord, have you seen Hungary?

I know her tongue is not easy.

I know my heart is heavy.

Lord, have you seen Hungary?

Girls are running

like the morning wind,

their hair chases clouds

in the eastern sky.

And here she is

braiding bread.

Oh, she is more slender

than the scent of this lily,

more threadbare than its

night shadow.

Lord, have you seen Hungary?

It is autumn there.

Lord, have you forgotten where

you could’ve planted her?

Your dry, rustling, lonely flower?

E

legy

Under bloated leaden skies

smoke floats above the landscape

as my soul, hovering low,

too heavy to soar.

Hardened spirit, delicate images,

follow the truth of the ages,

footprints toward the self,

toward the source. Look below

to another time

when you hunkered under

tumultuous skies

by haggard bulkheads

by the silence of anguish,

foreboding, pleading,

dissolving the thickness

of gloom in the mingling

of millions.

A whole race

is molded here. Everything in ruins.

The stiff dandelion opens its parasol

in the blight of foundry yards.

Through broken shards

the day ascends its sallow stairs

in sodden light.

Answer me.

Are you also from here?

Where the fierce longing

never ends.

A wretched sage,

squeezed by his enormous age,

the visage distorted in every face,

in every word, in every line.

Rest here. Where crippled borders

creak and groan,

keep vigil over a priggish order.

Recognize yourself? We wait

in the empty space

for a future that is solid, lovely

as plots dreaming tall houses

weaving the noise of life.

Only shards

wedged in mud cracks

can look at the grass

with those marble eyes.