The River
(A folyó) Through what sluices has it swept
before it finally reached my home
of clay soil and carved its crumbling bed?
Eternity humming from its dark source. The non-transparent water shows time
only its wrinkled silk surface.
Mirror images of sparkling light.
Waves sliding one under the other. Broken tiles in the mirror,
cracking, and still another glass,
between was and will be, I became / I’ll not be,
running water’s burning catharsis.
Dust
(Por)
There’s nothing I hate more than dust
in corners of the room, in understanding.
But I can no longer clean everything.
I’ve strength enough for work, but not for cleanness. I live in half-light. Literally half-light.
My eyes no longer tolerate the sun.
My heart can’t manage all your empathies.
I don’t look into death’s eyes unafraid. Because there are no gates of death, just slow
gatherings of dust. Mud and dirt cover our lives.
They gather in the corners of our souls.
We can’t step into the light for fear of drowning.
Into the spider’s web…
(A pókhálóba…) God entangled in the spider’s web
becomes immobile, a dummy,
woven into easily-broken
glittering threads of thought. His trembling wings drop off, those lights,
those phosphorescences that reflect each other.
He sinks into the darkness of our twilight,
into the harbours of despair. For just one minute liberate yourself,
erupt from our minds if only for a moment.
Let it be you that leads us through the gates
of death to the unknown far side of being. The Translator
(A fordító) He steps into the poem. Rock. It closes
behind him, he too becomes rock.
He becomes absorbed in the cell
Of the bones, in their vaulted arcades. But while he freezes, the clay about him
roasts at white heat, eventually melts,
and from the glowing magma there blossoms
a whole new framework, the rose in the desert. And as for him, he turns from rock, is enclosed
within the rock, is resurrected, vanishes
on the road that leads through his body
from fullness into wholeness.
From ‘Fifteen Haiku’
(A Tizenöt haiku-ból)
3.
Hot tear glows and rolls
down the desert of the face.
Earth in ice-cold space Translated by George Szirtes | 
