A Visit
          translation by Igor Maver

     In memoriam Sandor Weöres

Do not visit
Ancient poets.
Their long solitude
Flows more heavily
Than your swift time.
Their heads are not haloed
With the fifth edition
Of their collected works.
With a deadened look
They stare
At the charred notebooks,
In which they used to write
With burning pens.
Even unhappy loves
Cannot save them any more.
In their breasts
Their Turkish brides
Are no more than cold ashes.
They lie on old sofas,
Sunk in their depression,
And if a stair creaks
They wonder,
Whether the wooden staircase
Is being climbed by the doctor or death.
 
 
Robots
          translation by Veno Taufer & Michael Scammel
 
Robots are on the march.
The first robot is rectangular.
The stone in his hand
is a cube.
And a cube is a cube from time immemorial
and all that is, is a cube.
Robots are on the march.
The second robot is round.
The stone in his hand
is a sphere.
And a sphere is a sphere from time immemorial
And all that is, is a sphere.
Robots are on the march.
The stone in the sky, the stone on earth
has no choice.
Today it is stone, tomorrow a cube.
Today it is stone, tomorrow a sphere.
Today it is stone, tomorrow a robot.
Robots are on the march.
The cube smashes the sphere.
The sphere kills the cube.
For the cube is a cube forevermore.
For the sphere is a sphere forevermore.
Robots are on the march.
For as long as the cube is rectangular.
For as long as the sphere is round.


Mad Dog
      translation by Michael Biggins
 
He resisted the painstakingly bred
intelligence of the average dog.
Ignoring the bones
stripped of meat, when they
threw them to him.
He defied their brazen shamelessness.
And came to hate water fastened to chains,
sensing
that his thirst was greater and different.
He scented the great bitch of freedom.
They heard him breaking his chain.
Then they saw him running
with downcast head
through city squares and distant suburbs,
they saw him standing on a hillside
drinking from a spring,
until he came running down some dark hallway
into their dreams.
They woke up with butcher's faces.
But he, who used to submit
to their mercy,
no longer feared their anger.
He was only aware of the road beneath him,
of the sweet and wearisome rhythm of his legs
and sensed
what dogs were never meant to sense.
Then he saw them blocking the street.
That's a chain, he thought.
But he didn't turn back or hide his tail between his legs.
This side is life, that side is death.
He chose freedom.
They killed him like a dog.


Epitaph
          translation by Alasdair MacKinon
 
Here lies
god knows who
died god knows when
lived god knows when
did god knows what
born god knows when
and god knows why.

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