The moon hangs on a clouded sky.
I am surprised that I live.
Anxiously and with great care, death looks for us
and those it finds are all terribly white.
Sometimes a year looks back and howls
then drops to its knees.
Autumn is too much for me. It waits again
and winter with waits its dull pain.
The forest bleeds. The hours bleed.
Time spins overhead
and the wind scrawls
big dark numbers on the snow.
But I am still here
and I know why and why the air feels heavy -
a warm silence full of tiny noises circles me
just as it was before my birth.
I stop at the foot of a tree,
Its leaves cry with anger.
A branch reaches down. Is it strangling me?
I am not a coward. I am not weak, I am
tired. And silent. And the branch
is also mute and afraid as it enters my hair.
I should forget it, but I
forget nothing.
Clouds pour across the moon. Anger
leaves a poisonous dark-green bruise on the sky.
I roll myself a cigarette,
slowly, carefully. I live.
June 8, 1940.
Miklós Radnóti