A vadkacsa
(Részletek egy verses önéletrajzból)
Emlékkönyv a röt Bizáncról
–Faludy György
Prologue
(Notes from a failed autobiography)
1.
Do you ever sit near the bigger waters,
skip a stone
and let it question, like a child,
with its translucent waves, your rose-mottled
radiant blood-pool?
2.
You’re woken up on May nights,
when the apple tree opens
with a choking cry, you hear,
from white branch above white branch
a white molten metal
a whiteness of whiter
white, behind which even the moon-sugar
is mousy, a light beyond that.
3.
Do you love to peek upon the lamb-clouds
taking the form of expirations,
as you well know, having seen beauty,
castles, lace, the image of a man
profile of a stag. Or perhaps
you still remember it in full: the grand and beautiful
thing, which, like an ancient reptilian skeleton
lying in the sky– utterly dappled–
dropped one night, radical with happiness
in the year 931?
4.
Through the coffeehouse window,
in the street, the park, market
do you ever look at the faces?
Does you posture attract, your movement,
sound, color and the rest of it, my people,
whose hearts I covet:
come to me – a few million –
to be secretly forgiven by the dust of
language, my immense line of geese.
And all already nearing your end
grasp this: life is not so you,
come forth five new generations,
and there gaze upon even more,
as if you didn’t know, you are a youth,
a day-fly, a stray
hardly even a regular
in this earthly flop-house.
5.
Away, you sometimes negotiate the atlas,
just humorously, uselessly,
waiting to be in Madras again
and the periplus, where is Cueta?
Are you happy with the Himilayas
with a bubbly water in your right hand
the Arafura sea-landscapes
so blue and so many pretty islands?
Your golden angry New England
coast, this country of emeralds,
bedded in the massive center’s yellow skeleton
like a topaz harp.
You can find your home in the directory here, there,
but what correspondence do the dead have with these drawings?
Asia Minor of little arms and wooden stalls
a rust stain on the canvas of Iceland
a measure-stick is submersed by the Nile,
the blue weight of the world: lake Tana's
Persian shore in Gothic style
and whole pig roasts of Borneo.
While the terrestrial directory is still for you
you will never break the silence of grief
you will not see it all
there is perhaps nothing to see,
make your way through ancient rites,
family treasures, a world or two of your own,
your house, your house and you far from it?
6.
And finally:– you go to a museum
at dusk, around curfew,
stop often at an image
or before a statue,
with a model you’d be thankful for
are you still as you as they were?
you stop and peel yourself – and there is
nothing there, like a work of art–
style, individuality,
pose, pathos, color, this and that,
a creation of shellac!
so long as people encloud themselves
who could live in each other’s image?
7.
Watch the young Indian:
the bright terracotta skin,
come in wonder to the edge of the pavement,
carrying the bags of a Lama –
or maybe an upland Armenian merchant,
who might also wear a purple brocade:
his bronze face ravaged with lust.
Long snakes curling along
the contours of his arms.
Delicate hands, lips wide:
insidious? You’re wrong.
Mouth angled low in serenity.
Protruding ears, tendril-like.
It is Lorenzo, the Great.
8.
A pale lawyer, Cicero,
speaks from his marble throat:
My brother! Stay with us for a word,
all are for sale, who live.
First fib, twist
then defame, smear,
lie, give a sideways glance,
cheat, steal, bribe, and abet.
So I became famous, brave,
an invincible orator,
who defended the republic
what do you want from me? Zeus lord
help me (and if not:
I’ll help myself) I took much
–this sculpture is in the right place–
you want the truth from here?
What use is his glaring light.
When Rome argued
for teenagers (imagine: snow!),
then I went to my death.
9.
The third Capitol
ride’s forth a thousand eight hundred years
and is moved to speak,
trembling. – […]
10.
A lady sits on the wall of the Louvre
and because I love you,
I will embrace her
and switch you to her frame.
The donna screeches and blushes,
there sits afore a greenery –
the shrill voice rolls and rolls
like a skein of thread.
The lady runs and I run after
latching onto her density.
The park: a path among trimmed bushes
Le Notre park,
diminutive tall fountains
Coins? Not a few pieces
found their way to my pockets. I:
am he, who belongs there. His grey clothes and
strawberry cream pink.
Little Lovetemple, candles,
lake, trees, bench: this is color.
I feared that I was greedy, love-sick,
unruly and a liar.
But no. Fresh young girls came about me
deep waters, clean wells.
In the veiled voice I feel
only a little bit of melancholy.
From a bench in the willows
we’ll examine the lake
compare spears of light,
as they ring from the blue waters
the boring goldfish
like sluggish penises.
She says:– I am beautiful and frisky,
but I am in the age of time and tears.
How deep is the water! How blue the lake!
The sewage-flood of life.
It would be good to die together.
What do you say?
Behind the bench – I said – on a
golden haystack.
–Where is it?
Lord, I am a virgin.
Then let’s not, just some tuning,
not at a gallop, just roaming,
play, (pedzés?), lute-tuning,
that’s just such and so.
(
…
)
Sky a violet flag
and like a night serenade,
a far off harp sobs
a ding-dong rococo voice
through the autumn garden.
11.
(…)
(Kistarca Internment camp, 1950)
