Today is National Poetry Day in Hungary. The excellent and one of the best known Hungarian poets, Attila József was born on this day, which has been National Poetry Day since 1964.
Let us celebrate this great day by listening a to great Hungarian poet, László Nagy’s work, titled “Ki viszi át a szerelmet”, read by Oszkár Gáti, presented by Rambo himself. You can read the poem in English below:
Who Will Take Love
If one day my life submerges for ever,
who will adore the tiny cricket-fiddlers?
Who will breathe tender warmth on a frosty branch?
Who’ll crucify himself on a rainbow, parched?
In tears who will embrace and mellow
hips of rocks into a tender meadow?
Who will fondle what’s taken root in bare,
rough walls – arteries and human hair?
And for ravaged faith – who on earth
will build a cathedral from swear-words?
If one day my life submerges for ever,
who will care and scare away the vulture!
And who’ll take gently between his teeth preserved
Love safely to the other bank of the river!
Translation: N. Ullrich Katalin
Two amazing bonus videos for Hungarian Poetry Day:
Oscar winning actress Judi Dench recites from the famous Hungarian poet, Miklós Radnóti.
This rare video is a scene from Róbert Vas’ documentary entitled “My Homeland”, filmed in 1976. The film was transmitted by the BBC on the 20th anniversary of the crushing of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising. The title of the poem is “Nem tudhatom” (‘I cannot know’).
Iain Lindsay, British Ambassador to Hungary, reciting one of Gyula Juhász’s poems on 11 April 2017. You can read the poem in English below:
What was her blondness like?
I cannot recall… What was her blondness like?
I know that fields are blonde when summer yields
Grain in abundance on every yellow spike
And I can feel her blondness in the fields.
How blue her eyes were? I cannot remember
But when the autumn opens up the skies
Close by the languid farewell of September
I muse about the colour of her eyes.
Her silken voice is now beyond recalling,
But when the Spring comes and the meadows sigh,
I feel that Anna’s words are gently calling
Me from a Spring-time distant as the sky.
Translation: Kery, Leslie A.