. . . A couple of thousand men scattered throughout the great European cities. A few of them are famous; a few write unusually arid, consciously frightening and still peculiarly moving and gripping books; a few, shy and proud, write only letters, which will be found fifty or sixty years later and preserved as moral…
I'm moved by your deep affection and regret our parting: You bid me farewell with due attentiveness and fill my goblet with wine. It's not that I can't judge when I'm dead drunk, I just dread the moment I sober up on the road ahead.
trans. Hungarian Jascha Kessler and Maria Körösy End of November, 1956: a remote acquaintance looms out of the fog. We stalk the streets for an hour. He says, “. . .First the Party drops me, then Alice too. . . .” I won't rehearse the years, the friendship, and what struck me by surprise, the…
Little girls riding bikes on the sidewalk back and forth past each other, scampering in rapid figure-eights on their small bikes. I don't have words that ride bicycles But sparrow-light fluttery joyful dart like drops of clear laughter from leaves after rain . . .
My white hairs are terribly unfeeling: Day after day I pluck them, but they grow again. They started as a single strand of silk, Then gradually became a thousand stalks of snow. I don't avoid the sniggers of beautiful women, I'm only ashamed of the children's fright. At New Year's, I passed the half-hundred mark…
Put a blade of grass between your lips! It too is the Son of God, it too is crucified by Spring, and rises again in winter's fury: how fiery just one breath is! I was happy here, you know. We walked all one summer in the hidden paths of elder and wild strawberries; love cooled…
trans. Finnish Jascha Kessler and the author To the evening that speaks in two thousand tongues and knows not the meaning of war, I give myself. To the nighthawk's, the nightingale's tongues, the presence unseen of all that is, whose dreams make me loved. Their speech never leaves the lips, never stales the wine, but…
The moon shines down over the public ferry, Alone, I'm overwhelmed by thoughts of home. Birds roost in the trees round Lake P'eng-li, The moon mounts high up above the boat on the Chien-ch'ang. Dead drunk, old fishermen disperse from the market, In secluded buildings travelling merchants sleep. Where is that flute playing across the…
trans. Bulgarian Jascha Kessler & Alexander Shurbanov You were dying, fully conscious, having summoned the incredible strength you needed to go calmly, not crying, not moaning, not shuddering — to keep fear away from me. Your hand went softly cold in my hand, and led me gradually beyond to death, so as to introduce me….
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