Fish In The Net

I’m losing another day from life while I keep humming the words of a poem. You know it’s weird, my friend. You are telling me how much you hated poetry, then you give me this book by Pessoa: A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe. I already love the title. It says everything I want to hear. I just searched for the first poem I read when I opened the book somewhere in the middle. Ricardo Reis. (I think he’ll be my favourite one among the three persons.) I was thinking maybe it’s you who should have read this book first…

I love what I see because one day
I’ll stop seeing it. I also
Love it because it is.
In this calm moment when I feel myself
By loving more than by being,
I love all existence and myself.
No better thing could the primitive gods
Give me, were they to return -
They, who also know nothing.

I’m just writing you this because I couldn’t recall it by heart. Otherwise, I must say I can recall the whole conversation we had. Finally, I could tell to someone what role my writings have in my life. How I’m fixing the ’time out of joint’ by them. Another beautiful illusion. We need some of those. (Today I went further than this. In case illusion fails, in case writing doesn’t fix anything, (unfortunately, they can make things even worse) I’m fixing universe by running. Running = where time and place lose sense).

But let me get back to the one. The poem I wanted to put here, the poem that writes down my day perfectly - the day when I should read Breakfast of Champions and watch Permanent Vacation and I should learn some more Dutch instead... - I guess you need some time to enjoy it in Hungarian, so I searched for an English translation, too. (This is the site from where I took them: http://www.babelmatrix.org/ ). The poet is called Pilinszky János.

Halak a hálóban

Csillaghálóban hányódunk
partravont halak,
szánk a semmiségbe tátog,
száraz űrt harap.
Suttogón hiába hív az
elveszett elem,
szúró kövek, kavicsok közt
fuldokolva kell
egymás ellen élnünk-halnunk!
Szívünk megremeg.
Vergődésünk testvérünket
sebzi, fojtja meg.
Egymást túlkiáltó szónkra
visszhang sem felel;
öldökölnünk és csatáznunk
nincs miért, de kell.
Bűnhődünk, de bűnhődésünk
mégse büntetés,
nem válthat ki poklainkból
semmi szenvedés.
Roppant hálóban hányódunk
s éjfélkor talán
étek leszünk egy hatalmas
halász asztalán.

Fish in the net

Writhing in a star-net
like fish hauled on land
we gasp in the emptiness
our gills filled with sand

The element we've left and lost
whispers in vain
we pant on the shingle
were we've been thrown.

Crammed one against the other
fighting for breath
we struggle and tremble
in the face of death.

From the wriggling mass
come stifled cries
but the massacre continues
till one, then other, dies.

Atonement and repentance
are the language of the soul
but nothing can save us
from this hopeless hell –

We writhe in the net
of some cosmic fisherman
and maybe at midnight
will be in his frying pan.

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