Itt-Ott, 1986 (19. évfolyam, 1-4. szám)
1986 / 4. szám
VERSFORDÍTÁSOK SEVENTH ECLOGUE (Lager Heidenau, overlooking Zagubica, Yugoslavia, July 1944) See, the sun's setting now; our barracks and the rough-hewn fence of wild oak with the barbed wire trim are so light they're absorbed by the evening. Slowly the faltering gaze lets go of the pale of our bondage, and only the mind, the mind is aware of the stretch of the wire. Darling, even our fancy can only be free at a time like this, when sleep, the great liberator, dissolves our broken bodies, and then the camp's prisoners start on their journey back home. Tattered, shorn bald and lousy, the snoring captives are fleeing Serbia's hazy peaks for hidden and native regions. Hidden expanses of home! 0 tell me, is there a home, still? Our house — not hit by a bomb? Does it stand, as when we were called up? And he on my right, now groaning, and he on my left: will they make it? Is anyone left who will still understand these hexameters back there? Without diacritics, my fingers groping the lines into stanzas, I'm writing this poem in the murk of the night, the way I am living, blindly, inching along like a worm in the dark on the paper; flashlights and books have all been seized by the guards of the Lager, our mail's not delivered, and only the fog descends on our barracks. Frenchmen, witty Poles, rebel Serbs, loud Italians and sad Jews live here in the midst of the mountains, infested with rumors and vermin, one body, dismembered and feverish, yet leading a single existence, starved for good tidings, soft womanly words, and longing for freedom they wait for the end that is hid in the haze and hope for a wonder. I lie on the boards, a captive beast among vermin; the storm of the fleas has resumed, but the buzzing army of flies has retired. Night has fallen; again our confinement is shorter by one day, and so are our lives. The camp is asleep. The moon beams down on the land and the lines of wire have tautened once more in its brightness; through the window I see the shadows of guards bearing rifles cast on the walls as they pace to and fro midst the noises of nighttime. Darling, the camp is asleep, in their dreams the captives are soaring; giving a start and snorting they toss on the hard, narrow bunks, and drift into sleep anew, their faces aglow. Only I am sitting awake, the taste of a half-smoked cigarette in my mouth in the place of your kisses, and sleep will not come to bring me relief, for I'm not able to die, nor to live any longer without you.— Miklós Radnóti — transl. by L. J. Elteto Red spittle trickles from the oxen's mouths, the men are all done in and pissing blood, the troop's at rest, a reeking, motley band. A hideous death is blowing o'er the land. [Miklós Radnóti: "Razglednicák" #3, Mohács, October 24, 1944. Transl. by L. J. Elteto] 35
