MONASTRY IN THE HILLS
(Monk’s Song)

Each morning I fetch water from a hidden spring
and quietly watch the changing clouds.
I do not know if I will see another winter
but I am still happy, surrounded by mountains and green places
where so many mortals-- so many weak ones-- live.
I do not think about the pines because they're me.
Each time they think of me,
I stop wondering why the white walls of my retreat
do not look like snow on the bamboo fence.
The paths of fishermen and woodcutters intertwine
and even after a hundred years I would not want to untangle them
Nor am I tired by memories of a past I never had
Nor do I believe my prayers are heard by
a blue deer, kneeling, whose quiet breathing I can almost touch fully,
with my body.
I wonder where Sesson is now.
These plum branches await only night and the moon
to startle my long ago dreams
and scatter them on these roofs and this place
numerously inhabited by clouds and forests and squirrels
and these wild geese
and the spring hidden to everyone
and that which wanders on mountain paths
and cold cruel winds and dry brush
gathered near the monastery
on which to cook beans for forty years.
Every twilight, cranes follow the wind toward my thoughts
but they do not think of me at all;
I cannot find the way home because
I have never wished to find it.
I lie on the ground like a branch
My bones are as dry as brushwood.
If they asked me, I could not tell them the name
of the woman who was with me once,
who was with me once and warmed my heart.
The rain is sleeping.
Every branch, every treetop, is a warm human soul and
(now I realize) every breath of the wind
every snow-covered leaf on the slope of a hill is like this.
I fetch water from the hidden spring.

LONGING: POEM WITH A LIBERAL MOTIF

I lay my body down on your arms.
My body lies on the edge of your breath.
I lie encircling your body.
My body lies in your eyes and thoughts.
Your eye locks my body in its embrace.
Your body lies with my body on coarse sheets.
Our bodies lie down with each other in their dreams.
Our bodies lie down in each other’s arms.
My body causes you to lie down on forgotten roads.
Those roads once saw unknown bodies treading on them.
Those roads were once trampled by our bodies wandering together with unknown bodies.
I lay your body down in the memory of your body.
Your body lies in my memory where it (your body) has lain.
You lay your body down in my body.
My breath lays your body down in its rhythm.
Its rhythm is your rhythm, which is my rhythm.
Somewhere there are people, houses, children.
Our bodies lie around each other I lie in you from inside out.
The body of your lying down is the body of my lying down which is
the body of your lying down.
My body trod the paths which are your body.
The coarse sheet sizzles under the lying down of our bodies.
How much time has passed since your eye locked my body in its embrace?
Your body causes the lying down of my body in your dreams.
Our dreams are the dreams of our bodies.
Your body clasps arms over my lying down into you.
My eyes see your eyes.
The dreams of our bodies are our dream, which sees our lying down in its sleep.
There is old age.
The eyes of our lying down see each other.
The lying down of our bodies sizzles on the coarse sheet.
We lay each other down on roads covering unknown bodies.
Our bodies lay their bodies down in each others' bodies.
How much time has passed since you lay down in my lying down inside out?
The body of my breath is your body.
The breath of your lying down is my lying down.
Our thoughts circle our lying down.
Whose soul and winds blow in our laying
Our bodies lay each other’s lying down in each others' memories.
Our bodies lay each other down at the edge of our breathing.
My body causes the forgetting of the forgotten roads in our lying down.
Your lying down lays my lying down inside out.
Somewhere there are worries, stars, the dead with or without mourners.
Our dream is the dream of our lying down.
Our bodies embodied in our lying down are embodied in each others' lying down and in us.
The bodies of our lying down are embodied in each other; they embody each other.
They (the bodies of our lying down) are embodied together.
Our lying down together in each other is our body.

GENIUS LOCI 

For Hans Magnus Enzensberger

in a dreary café in Copenhagen, capital of Austria
with a few not so bad views over river Seine
I watch its interior full of tired and heat-worn people

the waiter briskly brings my pizza
and says with a stern smile:
“please, enjoy
it is almost like the ones mothers make
in the towns of my native Italy:
Vienna or Madrid or Bern”

pizza tastes well indeed I haven’t eaten all day
just some dried figs from a distant supermarket
at the Saint Mark’s Square

an elderly man in a green top hat sits across from me
and stares into the newspaper with indignation:
“why did they disperse this demonstration in London
they weren’t asking for much just the ban on the unsafe products
such insolence is unheard of Belgian police
but no wonder police always wins”

I nod in agreement
and glance involuntarily
at his shabby mouse-gray jacket

“I bought this ten years ago in New Delhi, capital of Kazakhstan
nothing else remains with me from there except sweet memories
which this jacket always carries with me
but here in Sierra Leone people are strange
I wonder if every Hungarian is like this including you”
“I am not from here
I am a traveler from a hot land
you may have heard of Georgia”
“of course, of course
once as a tourist I visited
your beautiful capital Sofia
I haven’t been there in ages though
it must have changed by now”
“what can I say it looks like Beijing to a foreign eye”
“what the capital of Sweden?”
the man stands up sets the folded newspaper on the table like a
heavy iron pot
nods good-bye and leaves the café with a wobble

I watch his stooped back
and for a second feel how he smiles
for I also think like him
that I will never again see him in this city
which is probably not as populous as
for example Ankara, capital of Japan
or Tartu, capital of Nigeria

then I return to my pizza but keep thinking about
how much will the marks of my memories weigh in twenty years
and will my jacket or a t-shirt or some person
in some dreary café in some city share this mounting weight
or will I be able to cut anything out of it
such as every meal I’ve savored in Salzburg, Poland
or the memory of Spanish wine from Tirana, capital of Bulgaria
or aimless journeys in countryside haulage in
Munich, the provincial town in Czech lands

forget it – my thought tells me – this is all madness
continue living the life which is as beautiful as
for example river Moldova
so fleetingly lapping
in the eternal Portuguese town of Zurich
like a spy tiptoeing
towards the everyday nerves of its citizens
or for example the river Donau
protecting like a wise serpent Stockholm, capital of Peru,
where at the last century’s end
couples often walked the streets with songs like this
”this river like so many others
cannot often see the sun for the clouds
but the clouds can never never
hide the sun from our eyes”
continue with the life you don’t know? To whom do I say
do not give me so many memories hidden away in so many lives
do not give me so many solitudes I can never return
do not give me forgotten dervishes and forgotten madmen
forgotten books forgotten love-stories
do not give me these passages from reference-books and encyclopedias:
“belongs to the ranks of forgotten authors”
do not make me read what is not written by poets

of course I know well that my guardian spirits
join battles of life and death
even here in the dreary café of Belgrade, capital of Finland
so as not to overcome each other for my love not to burn out
but still do not make me read what is not written by poets

my Turkish pizza is almost finished
but in my memory it is just as pure
as when I first saw it
when they brought its heart to me
as a torch for all tomorrows


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