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Contents

SÁNDOR KÁNYÁDI
INTRODUCTION to SÁNDOR KÁNYÁDI'S POETRY
A POEM IS SOMETHING YOU HAVE to TELL

DEW UPON a STAR
Rain Held Over
Yellow Marigolds
Winter Dusk
Rural Peace Poem
Deluge
A Wish
On the Shore
Twice the Full Moon...
Autumn Elegy
A Pair of Poplars
Springtime Garden Fires
Dew Upon a Star

TUNING OUT
My Memory
May Dismay 1957
The Dreamer
Hypothesis
Mirage
That Evening
White Seagull Pair
For Strings and Percussion (Bartók)
Snapshot
Spring Ballad
Relativity
The Gypsy Sprite
And Finally
Smoke
Pondering Stands the Man
Orphaned Spring Sunset
National Myth
Tuning Out
On the Death of a Sixteen-year Old
At the End
Evening Scene
What the Pine Saw
Power Lines, Gas and Water Pipes...
Campfire and Scythe
Noontime Shadow

VERTICAL HORSES
Dancing Embers
One Single Reed
The Stray Dog
Wartime
Agamemnon the Alcoholic
The Song of Taygetus
Stone Age
On God's Grave
At the Gate of Eden
One Frame from a Film
After Midnight
Copy
Vertical Horses
And Yet
Fall
The Ambulance
White
One Day Everything Will Be Fine
Questions
A Balloon
Numbed
Barefoot
Monologue Interieur with the Door Open
Knives
In the Beginning...
Objects
Horses
In Fearless Fear
Your Eyes
Winter Sonnet
Self Exorcism
From Tree to Tree
Message in a Bottle
A Song Choking Up on Itself

BLACK-AND-RED VERSES
Caged In
My Horse Broke Loose
The Waterboy
Dusk Flying Without Swallows
Empty Gift Boxes
Tipsy Mutterings
Triangle Afternoon
Ballad
Winter Landscape from the Train
Penny
Under Occupation
Zoltán Kodály
The Annunciation
Caption to the Portrait of Architect Károly Kós
After the Foray
The Way the River
Three Poems to the Memory of Péter Veres
  1. Reapers
  2. Left out of the Picture
  3. Rain
Memory Wake
Black-and-Red
The Woolen Blanket
Epigrams in Memory of Janus Pannonius
In Memoriam Szilágyi Domokos
Evening Confession
They Take Off...
I Wonder
Behind Smiles
Almost Passed Us By
How Much Longer
Adventure
After the First Blow
On My Deathbed
All Night Long in Front
By Their Names
Ostinato
The Sea in Slumber
Lamentation
Left Behind Again
After Resurrection
About That Longest Week
An Exchange of Words
Medium Light
Visiting Me
Because I'm Afraid
In Preview
Playing with Words
Shining the Thin Veneer
It's Only Now
The Boarded-up Fountains
Smoky
I've Seen Enough
Weathervanescarecrow
To Keep on the Move
The Gypsy Caravan
Work Song
Sumerian Sonnet
Requiem for a Forest
Bartók
For Zither
The Rope
Fall Flower
Short Supplication aboard a Sinking Lifeboat
Sigh I.
An Emotional Poem
Poetry Reading in the Nude
Fragment
Picture Postcard
Hearsay
Prometheus
The Tree
Unvaried Variation
Homebound
Dead Dolphin on a Mediterranean Shore
Senior Citizens
Snowflake
There's More
Continuity
Into Noah's Ark
The Two of Us Alone in the Evening
The Soccer Ball
Horse and Rider
Nomads
Paraphrasing Poet János Arany
Dusk
Chance Encounter
A Painting

POEMS about POETRY
A Note on the Margin with a Footnote
From the Unrecorded Service Regulations of Poetry
From the Diary of a Pilgrim
Still Going Strong
Pledge of Allegiance on Command
Song Lyrics
Counterpoem

ALL SOULS' DAY in VIENNA

UNADORNED SONGS
A Bell Inscription
Situation Song
The Poet Zoltán Zelk Died
The Artist
The Lucky One
For the School's 400th Anniversary
Dossier Lyrics
Sillysong
Evensong
Swan Song
The Next Move
Unadorned Song
To a Colleague

UNDER the SOUTHERN CROSS
Invocation
Between Foreign Rivers
Bogota Bagatelles
Wreath
The Christ of Corcovado (Rio)
The View Leaving Rio
Brief Encounter with Cartagena
If
Under the Southern Cross in Hargita

FINGERNAIL VERSES
Viruses
On Haiku Themes

GRAY SONNETS
The Cricket and the Ant
The Viper and the Fox
The Wolf and the Lamb
The Puffed-up Toad and the Ox
The Pine and the Reed
The Tree and the Ax
Doves and Rats
The Cotton Weaver and the Charcoal Burner
Off-the-record Historical Moments
  1. the Ides of March
  2. Caligula's Horse
Postcards from Dachau
For Parchment Scrolls
Nomadic Sonnets
Hungarian Historical Moments
  1. Pagan Koppány Vs. Vajk/St. Stephen
  2. First Recorded Hungarian Words: We're Dust and Ashes
Gray Sonnet

SPACE-CROSSING GATE
Facing God's Back
Should Be Abolished
I Confess
To My Friend Károly Király
The Lark
Power
Adjustment
When Some Day
Instead of Dreams in Deep Freeze
If He Had an Inkling
Privilege
Shadowplay
May
(True) Tale about the Typewriter
Screwed-up Rondeau
Progress
Precious Stone
Hexameters Clapped to Death
Subjugated: from the Book of the Preacher
The Empty Rope Rondeau
Stone Carvings
Space-crossing Gate
An Old Man's Last Supplication
Mass Grave Song
Freedom of Assembly with Parentheses
Barracks Ballad
Ballad Ad Notam Villon I.
Ballad Ad Notam Villon (II.)
Poet Stănescu's Farewell
A Missed Meeting with Poet Pilinszky
Vae Victis: on a Theme by Poet Baconsky
The Kossuth Statue of Cleveland
The Electronic Boomerang
Spaceshield
Chronicle Song
Mane and Skull
Conjugation in Contemporary Tense
Four Little Lines of Alarm
Good Wishes for Early Fall
Farewell to Frogs

THERE ARE REGIONS
There Are Regions
Prologue
A Plunging Walnut Leaf for Sándor Csoóri
Native Indian Song
After-midnight Language
Oil Print
Armenian Tombstones of Transylvania
With Well-worn Words
Rebuttal
Ashalchi Oki's Udmurt Ballad

MISMATCHED AUTUMN SONGS
Mismatched Autumn Lovesong
The Ballad of the Red Trolley Car
He Punishes Those He Loves
A Brief Invocation
Put-on Ars Poetica
Lead Sketch
Unexpected Yellow
The Way...
The Dogs of Grozny
As Winter Wood...
A Leaf Alights...
Reading the Papers
And Then
The Plaints of an Old Woman
The Joke of Regime Changes
Re-privatization
The City
Longing
The Doorway Where
At Night I'd Like to
Spring Invocation
For Clipped and Clipped-off Fingernails
For Five Fingernails
For Chewed-off Fingernails
Four Seasons
Issza's Verses
The Bottom of Our Garden...
My Spirit
Prophecy
Three Wishes
Not Only...
A Gentle Prayer
For a Pine
Holy Thursday
Memorial Room to the Unknown Poet
Litany of the Danube Basin
Dour Ditty
To Me the Sky...
Prefab Lines for Swan-songs
Approaching the End
Growing Old
The Old Birch of Stuttgart
Someone Roams Above the Trees
A Song for the Road

HOMECOMINGS
My Friend and Fellow Poet Aurel Gurghianu
Triptych to Romanian Poet Nichita Stănescu
Etching of Cranes
Endre Ady by the River Körös
The Homecoming of Marin Sorescu
A Poem in a Plain White Shirt

EARLY AND/OR UNDATED POEMS
Diary Entries
Before the Downpour
Sigh II.
The Three Legs of a Stool
Heat Spell in the City
Stag at the Watering Hole
Trifles
To Vladimir Mayakovsky's Statue
Dipping of the Flag
All My Life...
Time
The Globe-trotting Little Mouse
Ambrus the Bear
A Knight for a Flower

THE CURIOUS MOON
A REALITY POEM

HERETIC TELEGRAMS
Meeting Pan Cogito
Ad Hoc Monologue about King Báthory of Poland
A Tale of the Novel
Leisure Sonnet
Medals
It Would've Been So Easy
Wreaths for Pan Cogito
Joint Communiquè with Zbigniew Herbert
Heretic Telegrams to Pan Cogito on the Other Side

FRAGMENTS FROM A LETTER TO MY FATHER
MANE AND SKULL

AFTERWORD
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
EPILOGUE

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Foreword

Times change. Today's Hungarian readers do not need to hastily burn Kányádi's poems when officers of the secret police ring the doorbell. Today's readers just turn the knob on their car stereo and begin to listen to Kányádi's audiobook on DVD (although some of them will keep the windows shut - just in case).

Times do not change. Listening to Kányádi's poems is still a moment of celebration.

Listening to his poems, the driver automatically lowers the car windows, because he knows that the foul air of the air-conditioner will strangle the words. He feels a sudden urge to pull over to the side of the road and turn off the engine.

Times change. Since 1989 Kányádi is allowed to write without Communist censorship. Western readers might think that this led to radical changes in his voice or choice of topics. But this is not the case. Kányádi was unwilling to offer convenient truths under Communism, and he is unwilling to do so now.

Times do not change. The doorbell still rings, although today it is no longer the secret police pushing the bell, but the beggar who wants to spend the night in the staircase of our condo. And when they ring Kányádi's door, he wonders: the front door was locked, and a buzzer installed, but "if I had done what I should have done..."

Prof Helga Lénárt-Cheng,
St. Mary's University, California

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