Árpád Tóth: God's Broken Cello, I Keep My Silence (Isten törött csellója, hallgatok)

I am silence. Don't look for music here.

I resemble an instrument in this world

Like the one I saw, that violoncello

In the corner of a pleasing noble room.

The strings were broken. The neck was covered

By a veil of mourning, a silent crape.

Yet, it was not a sentimental object.

Dust covered it. Dust of reconciled years.

Such pain was written on it, that its silence

Itself is the saint, like that of the hermit,

Who, in the solitude of years, - and on the

Threshold of his cell, forgot how to speak.

While in a reverie about his lost life,

No longer does he remember old sorrows:

Only as if some fine far away vapour

Sprinkled blood all over the thick nightfall,

And made it a prettier, heavenlier secret,

Nothing else matching it merely muteness.

Let the loudmouthed crowd then roar away,

God's broken cello, I keep my silence.   

1926

Translated by: Maria Bencsath

Krisztina Tóth: Neighbourhood (Környék)

You cross a bridge and over there everybody is younger than you are:

the pedestrians, the byciclists, the trees, the statues.

It may be the time but you have not noticed it so far.

Somehow you haven't had any business in this neighbourhood.

You turn around but have a dizzy spell on the bridge.

Instead of a smooth mirror, this whirlpol of incertitude,

what to take to get home and whom you are going to find there

since you have left yourself behind a few years ago.

Translated by: Maria Bencsath

Árpád Tóth: Silent At Last (Csendes már...)

Silent, at last, is the forest,

Silent are the yellow gardens,

Wind hides amongst listless tree leaves,

Wind hides like a sad pariah,

Whistles through the dried out branches,

Cuddles near me licking my hand,

Farewell kerchief onward waving

Vagrant clouds and sullen sky,

Grief and sorrow sweeten the air,

Which is now like an aged wine

And the whole world in a shadow

Is a gloomy, giant good-bye. 

1907

Translated by: Maria Bencsath