Attila József

Attila József

Was happy, pleasant, and perhaps stubborn
when they attacked him in his assumed right.
He liked to eat, he resembled God in some things.
He got a coat from a Jewish doctor,
and here’s how relives referred to him:
Don’t-want-so-see-him-again.
He didn’t find tranquility in the Greek Orthodox Church,
only priests
His decay was nation-wide;

but, well, do not be sad

1927

   —Translated from the Hungarian by Michael Castro and Gábor G. Gyukics

Enlighten

Enlighten your children:
the gangsters are all human;
the witches—the mongers and hawkers, the hives,
—are yelping dogs, if not wolves!
They either bargain or philosophize,
but all, all change hope for money:
one sells coal, another love,
the third a poem like this.

And console them, if it’s a consolation
for children, that that’s the truth.
Or mumble them a new fable of
fascist communism—
for order is needed in the world,
and the order is because
children don’t exist in vain
and what’s good cannot be gratis.

And if a child opens his mouth,
gazes up at you, or weeps,
don’t trust him, do not believe that
your principles will delude him;
look at the cunning baby:
crying to get pity, but while
he smiles at your breast,
he grows nails and teeth.

1936

   —Translated from the Hungarian by Michael Castro and Gábor G. Gyukics

Regarded by many as Hungary’s greatest twentieth century poet, Attila József was born in Budapest in 1906 and died, after apparently throwing himself under a train, in December 1937. The poems are selected from Green Integers new József collection, A Transparent Lion: Selected Poems.

Michael Castro is a poet and translator who translated, with Gábor G. Gyukics, Swimming the Ground: Contemporary Hungarian Poetry. Gábor G. Gyukics was born in Budapest, and divides his time between the US and Hungary. He received the Fust Milan translator’s prise from the Hungarian Academy of Science in 1999.

English language copyright ©2006 by Michael Castro and Gábor G. Gyukics.