Dirty Dave
The other day while parked on the stand
of a fancy hotel,
Dirty Dave pulled up behind me.
In the mood for conversation
And a few laughs,
I stepped from my cab
Into his.
He was feasting on fried chicken -
Licking his fingers without a thought.
The windows were smoky
And full of grime from the streets.
Ashtrays Overloaded.
A crust of pizza
And an empty [...]
Filed under: Dave Church
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Attila Jozsef | April 11, 1905 – December 3, 1937
I’ll Be a Gardener
(Kertesz leszek) by Attila Jozsef, translated from the Hungarian by Paul Sohar
I’ll be a gardener of trees,
with the rising sun I’ll rise
and see to it that none of my
pregnant flowers ever dies.
Pregnant loving flowers will
flock around me in a sea,
and I don’t care [...]
Filed under: Attila Jozsef
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Attila Jozsef | April 11, 1905 – December 3, 1937
THE POOR ARE THE POOREST
(Aki szegeny, az a legszegenyebb) by Attila Jozsef
If God were a scribe and kept
Plying his pen, all he could do,
He couldn’t write a list of all
The sufferings the poor go through.
Poor folks are the poorest of all,
They add their shivers to winter [...]
Filed under: Attila Jozsef
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The Song of a Grieving Hungarian
(Bus Magyar eneke) by Jozsef Attila, translated from the Hungarian by Paul Sohar
A song is flying far a field, on raven wings of evening breeze,
a frayed-faced little man is singing, about the things he sees
around him in a silenced land, a Hungary in a daze,
and about summer slipping off, early [...]
Filed under: Attila Jozsef, Paul Sohar
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Attila Jozsef | April 11, 1905 – December 3, 1937
With A Pure Heart
Fatherless and motherless,
godless and countryless,
I’m without a crib or coffin,
without a lover to possess.
For the third day I have gone
without a meal of any kind.
My twenty years are worth a soup,
it’s a buyer I must find.
If no one else will purchase them,
I’ll accept [...]
Filed under: Attila Jozsef
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CERTAINTIES AND UNCERTAINTIES
(After Attila Jozsef, “To Sit, To Stand, To Kill, To Die”)
To drag this rake across wet leaves,
to scrub the crud from the bottom of this pan,
to wake as sunlight breaks through the gap in the shades,
to worry that all this could burn out, break,
all in the blink of an eye,
to pray that it [...]
Filed under: Attila Jozsef, Hank Kalet
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Attila Jozsef | April 11, 1905 – December 3, 1937
ATTILA JOZSEF
Attila Jozsef (1905-1937) was not the first one to shake up Hungarian poetry, to wake it up from the sweet slumber it had enjoyed in the gently rocking cradle of folk-song-like strophes in the 19th century. Enre Ady burst on the scene right at the [...]
Filed under: Attila Jozsef, Paul Sohar
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World wars gnawed humanity to the bone. We are all hollow now, we are all men now. Children are just the weak ones, the ones who starve and die, the ones who have no money. Lack of money is the greatest crime. Song on the question. Mankind is kept alive, humanity repressed. The price of [...]
Filed under: Beth Borrus
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FIRE
I didn’t cry fire in a crowded theater.
First of all, the theater wasn’t crowded.
And I didn’t cry fire or cry anything at all.
I probably merely murmured.
See I was watching this film about Adolf Hitler—
his last days in the bunker with Eva and his
typical dumb but pretty forties style secretary
(they don’t make them like that anymore,
thanks [...]
Filed under: Donald Lev
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