From the Hungarian.
If I had believed the whispers, the winds,
the prophecies raised in a cradle,
this night would not be so long,
this wall would not be rotting the garbage,
and the foot on the bedstead’s bumper
would not be traveling homelessly either,
and maybe it would not be so dark—
I’d sit
with the celebrated ventriloquists
in the tall chair of my glory
and a redding rose-troop would march before me,
and a spurred flock of birds,
and parachuted girl-hair in a storm of applause,
and none of them would give me horns
with junkyard-car antlers,
and my head could not be brought to a national ball,
like an ox head
that’s knife-adorned—
And on the lovely spinning-top evenings
the gardens would shade me,
and the spokes of the trees,
and I’d have time to eat,
to drink,
to die,
I’d have time to build a nest beneath the basalt mountain
and just gaze upward at the wrinkles of a kite’s eternal
face,
gloating while bowing;
all right, world! We float, we whirl,
we are transparent,
what do we need any other testimony for?
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