Miklós Radnóti

Because time is a fiction in the mind,
I don’t want to die, that is, in July
or Friday or last year. Farms and haystacks
are burning today. I Miklós Radnóti
write you a postcard with a poem. Darling,
I say to myself I won’t lie down. The ox
drools blood. The shepherd girl is an orphan
when the troops stray over the wheatfields.
Wife, after they beat me to death, look through
my trenchcoat, in the mass grave, for the poems.

Maybe in two years, by 1946,
you will find our bodies. Today all over
Hungary and Poland I am dying. In taverns
I am already forgotten. How could the smell
of my hair linger? I hid in cellars too,
smoked in darkness, kissed kisses of the taste
of blackberries. When peace comes I won’t be
at the Writers Club. Angels drink artillery.
Peasants dream among fleas, among worms. Wife,
the poems are time’s wings. Spread them darkly.