Let darkness cover me

Here's the second of the new poetry collections that I picked up when we were over in Glasgow recently.

It's a 2008 volume of András Gerevich's poetry, whose work I've never seen translated from his native Hungarian before ... so I was very pleased to stumble across this English translation, by George Szirtes :-)

And here's a favourite poem taken from within:


Seasons

On Sunday we escaped to play in the woods:
We ran, my head humming with birdsong,
Bees and bugs fizzed about my face,
We hid behind shrubs, behind tree trunks
To spy on strangers as they walked by.

The sun shone green through the swaying branches,
We played tag, pretended to be outlaws;
We clambered up rocks: I was harder
Than stone; quicker and slicker than snakes.
But sand got into my shoes, between my teeth.

I was up to my knees in dead leaves,
The mulch thick with ants, almost heaving
And crackling, as if the skulls of a whole flock
Of dead birds were crushed under the foliage –
I threw myself headlong although I was frightened.

Let darkness cover me, I could feel the damp earth
Beneath it, knew its raw stench. I was cold
And stood up, snow melted on my face and ran
Under my clothes. As it froze to my skin
It compressed me, snow covered me, my body was snow.

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András Gerevich (1976 - )
... as translated by George Szirtes

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