HARRY MATHEWS ~

H A R R Y      M A T H E W S

G  O  O  D  B  Y  E

self portrait

The Matyó Embroidery

Related Poem Content Details

Translated by Ottilie Mullet

On the platter set out in the center of the Matyó-embroidered tablecloth

was the syringe. And around it was silence. My father

gazed at my mother, and she back at him. Slowly,

faltering, he began to speak. I was seized by

an unusual shuddering. I recall that he used the word fate,

and that if   I consented to the injected dose,

we could all fall asleep. We would stay together

for all time. And evade the uncertainty in mortifying 

desperation. A fifteen-year-old’s desire to live 

cried out in me: “No!” To which

my father stated: “If you want to live, then

we too must keep on living, because we can’t leave you

by yourself.” My father was the village doctor. I grew up

with no siblings. My mother’s sister lived next door,

with her husband and two children, Nelly and Gyurika.

In the evenings I prayed: “Merciful Lord of mine,

My eyes have closed, but thine, yet still are open, father mine,

Watch over me as I recline.” Then this: “In one God 

I believe, in one homeland I believe, in the eternal 

divine truth I believe, in Hungary’s re-

surrection I believe. Amen.” Gyuri could not study in Pest,

he went to Brünn. Later, not even there. Then the family

sent him to Toulouse. My mind could not comprehend. Then

one of uncle Vilmos’s servants murdered him with six ax-blows.

He screamed crazed into the courtyard: “That’s what

the stinking   Jew deserved!” I found him, his head smashed open.

I ran to my father, who didn’t even believe it. And one after

the other, the horrors came. Nelly lived in Újvidék 

with her husband. Uncle Ernő was in the middle of shaving when

Hungarians broke into the flat. They were looking for the family. 

The nanny quickly threw a quilt onto six-month-old Tomika,

they didn’t notice him. Peterke was out with Nelly. Uncle Ernő

was executed on the ice of   the Danube. Nelly did not recover.

She knitted pullovers, each more beautiful than the next, so as not

to feel the pain. She went to Pest to learn a trade,

so she could support her children. That’s how it was when

nineteen-forty-four came. On March 15, one of my teachers said,

“You remain seated,” while the class sang the Anthem,

“and be quiet.” On the day of the nineteenth, the Germans

invaded. From then on, it was obligatory to wear the star.

Through the intervention of the medical officer and the Lord Lieutenant, my father

could have stayed out. I had to move to the ghetto with my mother. My

father said “The family should stay together.” All up and down

our street they stood, to bid farewell. Father acknowledged

them, but already he was just waiting

for the end. He had aged by decades. Then the injection,

the one I already spoke of, turned up on the table with the

Matyó embroidery. We sat in the evening underneath the open sky

before being loaded onto the freight cars. The doctor from the next village

drank mercury chloride with his wife. Despite my father’s stomach lavage,

they succumbed by the morning. There were eighty of us in the wagon.

An expectant mother gave birth on the way. But with no water, my father

could not save them. There were those who went mad in the freight cars.

My father taught me always to say “Ich will

arbeiten.” On the seventh of   July the train stopped. Father read 

the plaque, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and said, “We are

lost!” Megaphones blared, “Leave your packages

in the wagons, they will be brought to you later. Special vehicles

are coming for the sick and the elderly, just remain sitting,”

they repeated, “everything will be fine. Men exit

the wagon to the left, women to the right.” As farewell, 

my papa said, “Always be my clever, my obedient, my good 

little girl...    ” That is how we parted for eternity. Tomika and Peterke

were squeezing my hand tightly, but my mother said, “Don’t

you want to sit down? We can walk. Come...    ”

We moved forward in a column of five rows. The bulbs of the searchlights

blinded us in the eyes. A German officer, legs wide apart. He stood there

somewhere far away. Sent us to the right. Had to get undressed

in a room. Then they sent us into another, and the iron door slammed,

bolted shut. Screaming, I pounded on it again and again. We truly 

were lost, as last I understood.... Turning around, the others

already shaved bald. I didn’t recognize anyone.

They stood there like sheep. Upon their skin, the writing of gooseflesh.

— Szilárd Borbély 

___more we recommend_____________________

Berlin  '  Hamlet

New York Review of Books

2008

(1963 ~ 2014 )

ALICE OSWALD ~

SZ



good morning to you, first faint breeze of unrest

no louder than the sound of the ear unzipping,

late-comer, mere punctuation between seasons

whom the Chinese call

Sz



forgive me, small-mouth,

I heard you criticize the earth

and stepped outside to see the fields ruffle your cloth,

but you were moving on:

monotonous

vindictive

dust-bearing

scrupulous

one of the many mass-produced particles of time

by whom the fruit has small frost-marks

and their hearts are already eroded and I

too



if you think, leaf-thief,

if you think I care

about your soft-spoken

head-in-the-clouds

seizure of another and yet another and yet another hour



then hear me, Sz, 

you are so bodiless, so barely there

that I can only see you through starlings

whom you try this way and that like an uncomfortable coat

and then abandon


———————————

Alice Oswald
Falling Awake
Norton 2016

JULIO CORTAZAR ~

To Be Read in the Interrogative



Have you seen

have you truly seen

the snow that stars the felt steps of the breeze

Have you touched

really have you touched

the plate the bread the face of that woman you love so much

Have you lived

like a blow to the head

the flash the gasp the fall the flight

Have you known

known in every pore of your skin

how your eyes your hands your sex your soft heart

must be thrown away

must be wept away

must be invented all over again

Happy New Year


Look, I don't ask much,

just your hand, to hold it

like a little toad who'd sleep there happily.

I need that door you give me

for coming into your world, that little chunk

of green sugar, of a lucky ring.

Can't you just spare me your hand tonight

at the end of a year of hoarse-voiced owls?

You can't, for technical reasons. So

I weave it in the air, warping each finger,

the silky peach of the palm

and the back, that country of blue trees.

That's how I take it and hold it, as

if so much of the world

depended on it,

the succession of the four seasons,

the crowing of the roosters, the love of human beings.


12/31/1951



___________________

Julio Cortazar
SAVE TWILIGHT
Selected poems
translated by Stephen Kessler
CITY LIGHTS Pocket Poet Series
2016

HANNAH ARENDT ~

H A N N A H      A R E N D T

R E A D      M E

CIRCLE ~

STOP HIM ~

R E A D

E L I O T    A.    C O H E N

I N     T H E     A T L A N T I C

PERFECT WORLD ~

        

Perfect World

I could sit here

All day trying to

Draw a circle

Perfectly round

But a bird

Made one

Into

A tree

Pal Goose

On that sunny day

I opened your pen door

And let you out —

You loved the sun

Sun on snow

Making tracks to the pond —

Because it got too busy

But I have no excuse how

I forgot to close your

Pen door and left home

Sometime in the evening

Faraway, thoughts to you and

The open door but I would get back

The moon was out, and you

Loved the moon —

The raccoon was out, and he

Hunts by the moon —

The next morning you were

Found dead with eyes open

Suddenly flat and huge on the snow

Too big for raccoon to even bother with

Whose blood-tracks tricky designed away

And then as if he noticed how obvious

Seemed to wash his murderous paws

Off in the snow and vanished

You were our third gander

In twenty years, flocks of

Geese once upon a time mixed

With ducks and chickens and when

Our rooster died you were the new

Rooster for the chickens —

It looked funny, it looked

Practical, you fit

I miss you now when I split

Wood and wait to hear your call

Loud and sudden and part of me

Autobiography

I stopped thinking

About my name today

When in the truck

Returning home with

My son after working

Together at a farm

Splitting wood,

Picking kindling

Around the chopping

Stump, slinging manure

Onto the winter garden

And later hiking

High into the heather

Pasture, now in the

Truck with his gloves

Still on he sized it

Up by saying he didn’t

Like the name Bob — it

Was too short, only three

Letters — and it sounded

Like a name half-city

Half-country

Sunshine

in the garden

along the rows

on her long hair

down her arms

_______________________

Bob Arnold

Once In Vermont 

Gnomon

This concludes Once In Vermont, poems by Bob Arnold

 published by Gnomon Books from Frankfort, Kentucky

Another book of poems by Bob will be

coming soon