Új Magyar Út, 1955 (6. évfolyam, 1-10. szám)

1955-06-01 / 6-8. szám

Reményi-versek angolul

Angolra fordította Watson Kirkconnell

THE POWER OF SONG

What! Can they strike the goose-quill from my fingers? I only ask—yea know—'twere past their might.

All values they can wreck, till not one lingers.

But cannot wrest the pen with which I write.

Are you unhappy, full of dark distress?

Fly if you can, or hobble if you must.

Live as an artist, in stark selfishness,

Or be a bungler with a heart robust.

Carve for yourself distorted deities!

Stir up the hissing fires of mortal fate!

Poultice with gold the faithless heart’s disease,

Forgetting every good and simple state!

In ripe maturity of savage play

Cut your fierce swath through garden and through wood, And while you sweep the soft green leaves away And grow exalted with victorious mood,

In heavy rain, in sunshine or in storm,

0 crabbed Strength and tyrannous old Age,

Play on, your frenzied comedy perform,

And amid senseless trifles spend your rage!

You banish dreams with the forced voice of strife.

Your nerves are a mad clot of tangled wool.

To hell with you! In the blind maze of life My consolation is the Beautiful.

Tough as you are, and selfish, what, I wonder,

Could e’er be done to put you in a sweat?

My pity is for him whom villains plunder.

My eyes with tears of misery are wet.

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