From the Book of Revelations
for László Darvasi
And darkness flutters like a lonely flag
Together with the potsherds of the stars
And groping for the hair roots of the dead
Our south-wind sister stains them all with blood
And vintage wine cascades in heady showers
From broached intoxicating altitudes
And when the cask is empty tainted air
Comes wafting from the barrel-vaulted skies
The stallion of the sea has stormed away
The midnight mare is throbbing hard in labour
Her colt is dead and soon the dawn-placenta
Contaminates the wheatlands with its blight
And bone will never reunite with bone
The sawdust of the Void will drink the blood
That we have shed and like a gutted doll
The Lord will let his horsehair stuffing show
The guests invited to the wedding feast
Disperse their faces are like signet seals
And we red sealing wax we'll have to bear
That frozen image to the end of time
The potsherds of the stars are just a creak
Beneath the halfmoon-plated army boots
Where blood and wine are joined in holy wedlock
And where the groomsman's wedding rhyme is death
Translated by Peter Zollman
From 'Selected Poems' by István Baka