Fifth Ecolgue

(Fragment)

                      To the memory of György Bálint

My dear friend, how I shivered from the coldness of this poem,

how I feared the words; I ran away from them again today.

And scribbled down half-lines.

                       I tried to write about anything

anything else, but in vain! The night, this terrible concealing night

invokes me: talk about him.

                     And I wake with a start, but the voice

is silent, just like the dead out there on the fields of the Ukraine.

You've disappeared.

                    And this fall has brought no news of you.

                                                 In the woods

the winter's wild prophecy rustles again, the heavy clouds

are weighed down, and once they are filled with snow they stop in the sky.

Do you live? Who knows.

                    Even I don't know today, and I'm not annoyed

when they shrug their shoulders and hide their faces in pain.

And they know nothing.

                    But do you live? Are you just hurt?

Do you walk in the foliage among the forest mud's thick scent,

or are you a scent yourself?

                       The snow already flutters in the meadows.

He's disappeared, - rattles the news.

                     And inside, the heart beats and solidifies.

A terrible rigid pain awakens between my two ribs-

at these times your words of long ago shiver and live so clearly

in my memory, and I feel your earthly existence so distinctly,

as of one who is dead.

                      And still I cannot write about you now!



1943. November 21

(Translated by Gina Gönczi, 2004)