Molden

Hiking trails
Marked blood-red –

Pine-root steps
Lead to the crest,

Where altocumulus
Clouds graze.

Cones drop in front of us:
Hurled hand-grenades.

Pine nut shrapnel
Pierces the heart.


Rocks’ Pasture

My daughter’s skin: gleaming snow spot
Among the mountain’s snow spots.

And on the ridge, snow-lathered rocks
Graze, ruminating eternity.

The view’s pull imparts vision:
Black bulls upon green grass.


Blue Horses; Jostedalen-River

                To Vera

How many times have we crossed the small wooden bridge
Over the river tinged turquoise-blue by the glacier?

Only one car can cross at a time. Remember,
We set off uphill along the bank to seek the glacier

At its source. Now and again everything is simple.
As I looked through the windshield at the river,

It seemed as if a herd of blue horses, mouths foaming,
With backs, white-water lathered, bolted by.


Lifeline

The land’s the palm of a hand
– (god’s) I leave it unsaid –

Cut in halves by the rushing river’s
Turquoise-blue lifeline.

But what captures our attention
Is the creek’s thinner line,

Where we bathed
In the midst of wagtails.

We stand above the valley, mountainside –
Diminutive soothsayers who try to read

This huge, rock-callused palm.


A Single Bird

                To Árpád Kun

Sometimes one bird
Embodies the pinewood.

Let us say in the fieldfare

That crashed into the windowpane,
From gaseous metamorphosed air.

Under its head’s ash-gray feathers
A glowing eye flickered its last.

Wind tousles the pine needles
Of its feathers. Lean

Close and you can hear
Murmurings from a miniature wood.

The beak, agape, oozes resin,
Not blood.


Pine-soap

In the kitchen,
By the faucet:

Soap,
Boiled from pine resin.

I smell it,
While washing dishes,

And enter
A forest chamber,

Whitewashed with snow.


I’m the lake

It’s not my daughter who looks like me;
It’s my face that mirrors her looks.

Translated by: Géza Simon

Tags: Roland Acsai