Fáklyaláng, 1961. február-október (2. évfolyam, 2-10. szám)

1961-10-23 / 8-10. szám

Hungarian Torchlight

3

ON TYRANNY

and in the way

it stops at the doorway;

Gyula Illyés:

A SENTENCE

Where there’s tyranny there’s tyranny; not only in the gun-barrel, not only in the prison cell,

not only in the torture rooms, not only in the nights, in the voice of the shouting guard; there’s tyranny,

not only in the speech of the prosecutor, pouring like dark smoke, in the confessions, in the wall-tappings of prisoners,

not only in the judge’s passionless sentence; “guilty!” there’s tyranny not only in the martial

cult’s “Attention!” and “Fire!” and in the drum rolls, and in the way the corpse is thrust into a hole,

not only in the secretly half-opened door, in fearfully whispered news,

in the finger, dropping

in front of the lips, cautioning "Hush”;

there is tyranny

not only in the facial expression

firmly set like iron bars,

and in the stillborn

tormented cry of pain within these

liars,

in the shower of silent tears adding to this silence in a glazed eyeball;

there is tyranny

not only in the cheers

of men upstanding

who cry “Hurrah!” and sing;

where there’s tyranny there’s tyranny not only in the tirelessly clapping palms,

in orchestras in operas in the braggart statues of tyrants just as mendaciously loud, in colours, in picture galleries,

in each embracing frame, even in the painters’ brush, not only in the sound of the car gliding softly in the night

where there’s tyranny, it’s there in actual presence in everything,

in the way not even your God was in old times;

in the “how are you’s”?

repeated so automatically in the street,

in the loosing of the grip

to give a nonchalant handshake,

not only in the questioning, it is there in the declaration of love, in the sweet drunkenness of words, like a fly in the wine;

because you only believe beautiful what once has already belonged to the tyrant; you have slept with him when you thought you were making love to another;

in plate and in glass

it is there in your nose, your mouth

in coldness and dimness

out of doors and in your room . . .

in tranquility,

in the boredom of the shackles, in the whisper of the rain, in the bars that reach to the sky,

in the falling of the snow white like the prison wall; it looks at you out of your dog’s eyes,

and because it’s there in every ambition, it is in your tomorrow, in your thought in every one of your gestures;

like a river in its bed you follow it and you create it; you spy out of this circle? it looks at you from the mirror,

it watches you, you would run in vain you’re prisoner and warder at the same time: into the tang of your tobacco into the fabric of your clothes

it seeps in, etches like acid down to your marrow, you would like to think, yet no idea but it comes into your mind,

you would like to look but you see only what it creates like magic in front of you, and already there is a circle of fire, a forest-fire made out of match-sticks,

because when you dropped one,

you didn’t crush it:

and thus it guards you now,

in the factory, in the field, in the house;

and you no longer feel the meaning of life, what is meat and bread what is it to love, to desire with wide-open arms,

thus the slave himself forges and bears his own shackles; when you eat you nourish it, you beget your child for it;

where there’s tyranny everyone is a link in the chain; it stinks and pours out of you, you are tyranny yourself;

like moles in the sunshine, we walk in the dark, we fidget in our chamber as if it were the Sahara;

because where there’s tyranny all is in vain,

even the song, however faithful, whatever the work you achieve,

for it stands

in advance at your grave

and it tells you who you have been,

even your dust serves tyranny.

there’s tyranny in the nursery school, in paternal advice in the mother’s smile,

in the way a child replies to a stranger;

not only in the barbed wire, not only in the booksellers’ stand, more than barbed wire in the hypnotic slogans;

it is there

in the goodbye kiss,

in the way the wife says:

“when will you be home, dear?”

for not even in your dreams are you alone, it is there in the bridal bed, and before in the dawning desire,

in the way suddenly your lover’s face becomes frozen, because tyranny is there in the amorous trysts,