#752 - family tree

 

23.i.22

752

3.23

family tree

 

as if in a dream

they come to me

 

on the trail

by the wheel to rut

 

horse merchant

flour merchant

the always wife

and the door-to-door

 

who are they?

and ask the same

 

often one has to guess for them

the names fall away with time

 

a time before imperial decree

names were as far as remember

 

I stay in bed where strange birds sing

they are playing cards again

 

with Béla of the many wives

let’s count –

Melánia

(he sold her jewellery while she wasn’t looking)

Paula, my grandmother, never met

Anna

Jolán

Adél

that’s five

but according to dad there were more

 

each knows her his way

and the verses

or whom to ask

 

they keep me half awake with this

as if the past

were trying to remember me

 

faceless, up a tree

when all are in the ground

 

let the dead look after themselves

dad said Jesus said

 

see the dew falling

hear the first light

 

like father like son

kind of climbing

and never fall far from the tree

         they say

 

new walls and thatch my head

 

what did these brothers do?

Ignácz (who was Izidor first)

then Izidor, who kept the name

Heinrich (became Kornis),

and Géza was the architect

 

respectable, eking out

climbing into the branches

 

Berta and Riza, daughters of Rozália

constantly expecting ruin  

 

into the branches

 

some of them are a chimney

intimate and gone

 

they are asking

who are you?

what will you become?

 

we are waiting all the while

 

I have another side of the world

you’d never believe how I’m here

 

it’s like somebody went into a book

and was never seen again

 

and now you mention it –

that’s how I feel myself, looking back

 

out of the colourless dawn, as of mist

 

traipsing for a portrait

driven and driven to this

 

hard graft

and how we come by

least and most credulous these

 

I know these people, they own and disown

in time before forgetting themselves

when there was a language

 

so many pretending

and tricked from religion

 

God saw all

as they take to the grave

 

it’s between me and sleep

it’s all as if in a dream

 

I must be one of theirs

 

further and back they bury

until we’re in the Bible

flight and flood – hard lessons

and come to the garden at last

 

there’s always another side of it –  

the family when the child is born

you won’t see those peering in

all as if in a dream

 

I am holding them in my head while I can

they each have an end of my heart

a belonging

 

as strange as the birds of my home

 

thanks to the research of Anna Fenyvesi, Diana Ruzsa and other friends at MACSE