Miklos Radnoti Poems

I lived, but then in living I was feeble in life and
always knew that they would bury me here in the end,
...

A few miles away they're incinerating
the haystacks and the houses,
while squatting here on the fringe of this pleasant meadow,
...

Out of Bulgaria, the great wild roar of the artillery thunders,
resounds on the mountain ridges, rebounds, then ebbs into silence
while here men, beasts, wagons and imagination all steadily increase;
...

Crazy, who, from collapsing, gets up for new advance,
and moves in stumbling torture the limbs to get his chance,
and still is heading forward as if with wings he'd fly,
in vain the trench is calling, he does not dare to die.
...

The moon sways on a foamy sky,
I am amazed that I live.
An overzealous death searches this age
and those it discovers are all so very pale.
...

1. Monday Evening

You see, now fear often fingers your heart,
and at times the world seems only distant news;
...

I went out, closed the street door, and the clock struck ten,
on shining wheels the baker rustled by and hummed,
...

I'm a poet and nobody needs me,
not even if I mutter wordlessly:
u-u-u- no matter, for instead of me,
prying devils will sing relentlessly.
...