George Szirtes  (György Szirtes)

Translator

At dawn I was woken by the wind. It was rattling
the window. I looked out to see the dark sky
and the tired moon flickering like a badly
screwed-in light bulb. I glanced at my watch;
almost five-thirty. Usually by this time buses
have already set out on their routes from high-rise
outer suburbs and people are waiting at bus stops
gathering like swollen lymph-glands in nodes
of accusation, helpless with anxiety. But here
where I live, body is resting, flaccid, still asleep.
It can’t really feel what is coming to fruition
under the sky or what variety of murderous

furies are seeping through the walls.
I rose and sat at the table in my underpants
as usual. I was looking for alternative
drafts of a translation I should have handed
in several days ago. I must have spent
at least an hour like this. Behind panes
of coloured glass the bed ploughed on like
an imagined ship, the person sleeping in it
had never dreamt of me. The crooked slope
of the roofs opposite slowly separated from
the clearing sky and, like the tide in a harbour
ever deeper and louder, rose the grumbling

of traffic. And four floors above it all,
like someone waking from a long stupor,
I was alone yet no longer alone.
I was glad of the proximity of objects
because they were embodied, not just paper,
pens, the glimmering light, the noise below,
the walls and sky but also the formless rising
fury. So I, with the sleeper’s sense of the infinite,
wanted all solid objects close to me, and the person
who never dreamed of me, the one I had often
to seek far off, now appeared from behind
the glass wall, drowsy, still warm from the bed

Every night they set out to kill someone;
their guns fully loaded each time
to rouse the wicked from their dreams −
the sole mark of the wicked: being a gypsy.
It could be anyone − a man, a woman − who cares?
It could be small children, even babes-in-arms.
They quickly hunted down the man and woman,
the father with his son, the mother with her daughter.
Then they ran home to tuck themselves into bed
to continue to plan for a still brighter future.
And so the days passed by − the weeks, the months −
and every night they set out to kill someone
armed to the teeth against those without weapons.
To rouse the wicked gypsy from his dreams
while the gypsy could not hope to escape his fate.
The people were shocked at first. Executions?
Are they really killing off the gypsies?
Perhaps it is the gypsies killing off each other?
A case of the gypsy killing the wicked gypsy?
They shuddered to think of it − their shudder
composed of terror mixed with a kind of pleasure.
They wrung their hands − hand-wringing being a pleasure,
but then they got used to the new ways of the world,
and pretended that such deaths were acts of God
that killers arrived and left on gusts of wind −
not in black four-wheel drives parked down a track.
They shrugged and muttered it was possible,
resigning themselves to it. And then one fine morning
I saw in the mirror how I too closed my eyes
and however much I scrubbed away at my own body,
no scrubbing could rid me of the filthy stain −
the filth of resignation, the shame of it.
And then one day the killers were arrested.
It was at the end of the nightly hunt for gypsies.
The nightmare has passed; now we can sleep again,
and dream that ‘gypsy’ is not a term of abuse −
yet still wake startled, scrubbing in the dark.

_{*On the night of 23 Februar 2009 a Roma man and his 5-year-old son were shot and their house burnt down, seriously injuring the two of the children and their mother, in Tatárszentgyörgy, some sixty km southeast from Budapest. The murders were part of a series of violent attacks against Romas by a far-right group during the winter of 2008/2009.}

It seemed no more than a clump of earth in the thaw,
a snowball that had rolled down a steep slope.
The day was darkening, nothing to see at all
just fields like tin, the windscreen part steamed up,
but as we neared it seemed vaguely to shift
like a heavy coat raising a loose sleeve,
a ditched hitchhiker’s shade thumbing a lift
in the brief glare of the passing headlights’ weave.
It was there one moment, gone the next. Each car
in the queue steered well clear of the thing
but I looked out for it on the hard verge
and suddenly there it was again. It seemed to sink
like a body, its two near legs in sludge
as if about to run, its nose held to the air,
its upper part attent. But behind I saw
its lower half, wrecked to a pulp. And there,
from its blood-clotted coat, stuck its back leg
that to a regular, agonising pulse kept kicking;
mouth wide open, it sat there, a half-dog
though I could tell from its eyes that it saw everything.
I cried out, Stop! draw up at the side
of the road. I begged you to save it or kill it now,
anything, let the cars behind us provide
an ending. But what can I do? What? Just how
should I end it? And so your voice grew sharp.
What do you want of me? What is it you want? Tell me!
I wanted you not to leave it, I wanted you to stop.
Once you found it you should look after it or kill it.
A week we tended the dog, because we thought
at least it’s better off home with us giving it attention,
as if it were we ourselves who had hit it and left it out
in the road, a fact we had somehow not to mention.
But I could still not help wanting you wrapped
about me at night: I watched your muscular arm
trying not to think of the body that lay propped
in the roadside ditch, of the leg beating like a drum
while your eyes were focused somewhere far away
but did not answer; about the constant fury
and resignation involved in even love-making, and the way
you asked me just what it was that I wanted you to do,
striking the steering wheel over and over again,
and not once looking directly at me ,while I
watched as beyond your shoulder rain beat down,
soaking fields under a bloodshot winter sky.

How many women have I tortured? God,
How many! And how perfectly deformed
their bodies were as one by one they trod

the red carpet, swayed and posed
in gratitude to me, I who prefer a closed
door to the blatantly exposed

(and they pretend to disdain me even while
seeking my good graces, S & M style)
insisting I serve them with a wide eyed smile.

Those who possess me seek the praise
- and might receive it - of the blank male gaze.
They use me and disparage me all ways

and yet are one with me, have flounced
about while in my steady grip
or slipped into me unannounced.

Talk ingof perverts, I am stuffed with them,
(this is where it comes to S & M).
it’s like being in a prison cell.

I am the stocks where these mad bats from hell
work out. I work my magic well
and turn them out as new after a spell.

They undo me, as might anyone.
I am what they have done.
But why do they insist on carying on

with me - the feeling isn’t mutual -
with me in particular!
Why pick on me when there are

plenty - women or worms - it matters not
happy to give them all they’ve got.
All clichés, you can stuff the lot

into one old hat and call it quits.
I’m not for clichés, not one fits.
I wish they left me alone, but it’s

hopeless, I am forced to serve.
I’m always different and will swerve
from following an alien curve.

Is this their thanks? This sorry item.
All for some man to woo or bride them.
A pity it is to prettify them.

1
Is it detached or all-forgiving?
We need a passport to get through.
It nods us past in quick succession
Just anyone, no matter who.
I can rely on its detachment
As I move from place to place.
All those languages it masters,
Wherever I dare show my face!
It’s no big deal who’s looking in it
As it serves its own blind grace.

2
It neither befriends nor breaks up with you.
Though when you’re pushed in front of it
Whether you’re plain or just plain gorgeous
It frowns and takes the brunt of it.
Could this absolute indifference
Be Absolute? (It takes no joy
In my bare flesh, nor is it bored.)
In all my phases I am simply
What seems to vanish then return,
Part of its cosmic unconcern.

3
The distance is too terrifying.
It could be less but it is clear
some speck of me would still appear.
The mirror will serve us blindly
And whether harshly or quite kindly
Forgets at once. There’s little fuss,
Or major choice required for us.
It lets us do just what we want.
Mine drops me quick without a trace.
Mechanically wipes out my face.

How many people should be
Invited to the Ramsey party
So that among the guests there should
Be three at least who know or else
Not know each other?
Assume six people are invited.
One of them, say John, will know
Or else not know at least, say, three
Of the five others. If he knows three
And out the three there are two
(Mary and Paul) who know each other
(Together with John) they form a quorum;
But if they do not know each other
(Only John) them, with the others,
They still constitute a quorum,
In so far as at least three
Don’t know each other. And should four,
Say, know or else not know
Another person, eighteen guests
Are necessary. More than that
And only an approximate
Estimate is possible, but that
For now will make no difference.
The Ramsey Principle states clearly
That perfect disorder can’t exist.
But how many parties must you have
And how many must I attend
Or not attend that I may know
Or not know you. Either I will
Know your guests or not know them.
I know who knows me and I know
Who doesn’t, but could we two form
A quorum, just the two of us
While not knowing how John gets on
(With John) or Mary (with Mary) or Paul (with Paul)
Or you (with you) or I (with me)?
Could we, and if so, how many of us,
Be guests at a Ramsey party
While examining our reflection
So helplessly in the hall mirror?

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* Frank Plumpton Ramsey (1904-1930), mathematician, philosopher, economist, made a lasting contribution to the field of combinatorics; according to his theory, perfect disorder is impossible, the appearance of disorder depending ont he size of the sample provided.