Day of the Dead, Budapest
- George Szirtes
Down the main arterials, on ring
roads, in alleyways,
The dead stand perpendicular with
heads ablaze.
And some of them blow out, while
others burn right down
And leave small patches of
darkness like footsteps about town.
Black
Sea Sonnets
Palm
There
is the sea, we say, as the wind
pushes
if to and fro, and each time it lays
another
open palm before us
it
whisks it away. One day is like all days,
the
same phrase sung by the same chorus.
In the
distance the lights and cries
of a
wedding, stray dogs in loose family groups.
It is
as if the night were pinned
to the
sky insecurely, not quite the right size.
And
what might lie behind it? Brilliant loops
of
naked stars cavorting and a moon full
of bad
luck growing ever more silver. There
is
something in the water beyond the pull
of
tides, something released into the air.
Lake
And
the little brown frogs plop into the lake
as if
keeping time to footsteps. How still it is.
Acorns
lie on the ground, the leaves are falling
so
silently, so lightly. There is nothing to shake
the
trees, only the nearby sea, the invisible cities
hidden
under it, full of darkness and loss.
In the
submarine city traffic is crawling
past
paper-thin apartment blocks, across
wide
boulevards, but here there is only the moment
before
time begins. The water is smooth and tight
in the
lake. The sea nearby is almost silent.
Water
and water. And then the frog springs
and
leaps with its tiny splash and time sings
for an
instant as it might do this or any other night.
Speech
The
noise of fear remains long after the cause;
becomes
itself a cause, and habits die hard.
You
hear it in the speeches, watch fraught slips
of
paper circulate, or see a questioner pause
and
remain silent. The Black Sea purses its lips
at the
facing villas and draws us in to her
like a
dull secret. Shall we walk in and stir
the
waves a little? Pick a few cowries? Reward
ourselves
for our exhaustion? Feed the dogs
that
scamper about our feet? There are lists
to
cover the darkest recesses of your heart
but
the wind sweeps them away. What is it clogs
the
arteries and blows the official files apart
reminding
us the outside world exists?
Delta
Hour
after hour, cruising through high reeds
in the
Delta. Phalaropes, egrets, delicate
yellowish
necks. Fishermen, cabins, then nothing.
More
nothing. More reeds. The odd pocket
of
humanity, then floating. Each channel breeds
an
identical silence in regulation clothing.
Good
to die here perhaps, or simply to dream
in the
continuous sun that blisters our skin,
to
move into an entropic state, to survive in
our
own decay. Idyllic too: the stream
lapping
at the boat with its tonnage of words,
the
endless black coffee. We are part of the river,
drifting
among spirits of pale waterbirds.
One
should stay here, if possible, for ever.
Beach
Two
figures on the beach in the dark.
A car
cruises by. Two more figures approach.
Slurp,
say the waves, licking at their feet.
Night
shimmers and crackles with stars. Dogs bark
in the
distance, sniffing the air with its sweet
tang
of sufficiency. The moment is stable.
The
sea frozen. Never again will it encroach
on the
cities on its fringes. But underground
the
faults widen and slide to a predictable
if
imprecise rhythm, to a low rumbling sound
beneath
the metro that precedes panic. One man
is
making deals, another is counting names,
and
the sea begins to move more subtly than
either
can know, in tongues, with cold black flames.
You
press the button but the lift won't start
however
you keep slamming at the door.
You
must get out. The hospital needs treatment
more
than its patients. There is a secret art
to
finding the right staircase. Every floor
could
be another. Your appointment
is
with M..C. Escher, dying in a ward
suspended
in a wing elsewhere. The lost
are
fading into kindness or are restored
to a
fading kind of health. We have crossed
some
great divide into this. There is sea
in the
walls, sea in the blood, in the head
of the
man on the ventilator. The dead
sing
down the lift shaft. The lift itself stands empty
Sweet
There
are places to get drunk in. The wedding night
at the
hotel. The presidential villa with its terrace
overlooking
the water. The bedroom with its freight
of
sharp mosquitos. In the company of Cerberus,
the
dog in the driveway, and his friends. We are alight
with
dowsed bulbs and the television flickering
in the
corner. It is inexpressibly sweet
all
this, among the lost fireflies of a state
in its
dotage or birth pangs, whichever it is,
waiting
for hands or lips or languages to meet
in the
lottery of improbabilities.
The
sea is murmuring under its black wing.
The
frogs by the lake hesitate, then fly
away,
dropping like light rain from a clear sky.
Body
The
spirit is compact with the body. This one
is
seen by night, by a flickering television
that
plays on the inside of the skull and in
the
fingers, amplified through the heart.
A long
way past twelve, new programmes begin
but
none can keep spirit and body apart.
Pictures
stutter, fizz into music, then slip
between
the eyes. Voices, more voices. A curved
shadow
turns to tears down a fingertip.
Regular
news bulletins continue their well-preserved
list
of disasters. The sea continues lapping
at the
shore. Outside the window the dark
presses
its face to the glass and starts tapping
out
reminders, its eyes brilliant and stark.
Song
Inside
every other is a you, and this you
is
what I would sing, if I had a voice to sing it,
because
the song would be poignant, pointed,
unmistakeable,
rejoicing, eternal and blue,
the
way a horn tails off into silence or an unlit
room.
And I'd hear the Black Sea as it shunted
slowly
to an fro, its joy made of desire,
of
loss, and sheer astonishment. Perhaps
at its
core, in its dying deep bed, it moans
and
hums in a voice we can't hear, that laps
at the
place where our hands were, where a silver wire
of
foam creeps beneath the skin into the bones
and
goes on living there, I don't know how,
but it's
as if I heard that singing now.