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Budapest: A Quest through Space and Time (1-7)
I.
Three bars and a strip joint on Akacfa utca
Akacfa-Hungarian for some tree I can’t remember.
I step over a body
Cold and hard as the granite step
On which the poor vagrant man slept.
He mumbles to me,
But I don’t understand.
Bottles strewn about the sidewalk
Glass like gemstones from a crown
Of a king of a forgotten time.
A young man
Not yet a man
Plays a gypsy tune on a fiddle.
No one smiled as they passed
or stopped to dance.
Not a nod, not a coin--
His eye ever fixed on me.
One lilac and emerald shawl
Obscures the face of a woman disfigured
Her eleven children sprawled out in the underground
Like dogs bickering, huddling, whimpering
Licking their cuts and mangled skin.
And limping along with a box for one shoe,
The man with steel gray hair steps into a puddle,
frowning.
Then another with a club leg dragging
Along behind him
Pushes flyers into others’ hands.
Hands, which in turn,
Cast them on the ground when he is out of sight.
Water splashes up from cars
Creating monsoons,
Flyers swept away like leaves on a stream
But the club-footed man still holds out his hands staring
At the ground. The flyers floating by.
A gray fog, the color of the Danube
Permeates the streets
As my fingers trace the holes in the walls
Where bombs and shrapnel blew away pieces
Of Beauty, carvings wiped clean
As the faces of those who brushed away the pain
From their dusty eyes.
II.
Guards in uniforms.
“Controllers.”
That is what we call them.
They check our passes.
A girl carrying a bag labeled “Amsterdam”
Tries to pass through without a tag.
The Controller Guards lunge
themselves at her, who scratches
and yelps.
They spit on her.
She gets away.
They look at me.
I’m next in line.
I show my pass
They nod, urge me along.
I let out a deep breath
For fear of doing wrong.
The girl from Amsterdam
May not be so quick next time.
The controllers lit a cigarette
And for a second I wonder
If they will take them and burn
The people with no passes.
But that would never happen.
III.
The gates to the school are closed.
It creaks when it opens,
its hinges needing oil. Smoke
from students' cigarettes collect like gas
And then I start to think—
Classes done.
I leave the foreboding
iron gates as the rust
seeps blood . . .
And all one can see is bars
The rusty bars
Bars like a prison
Like the prison
Like the horrible place
They sent my great-grandfather
Simply because he was educated
And thus, a threat.
Education is dangerous here.
IV.
A tram takes me across the river
To Buda, to the castle on the hill
To remnants of that horrible time
Tanks and statues displayed outside
Children playing, climbing the tanks
Parents snapping pictures wildly
As if it were only make-believe.
A woman in white stone,
Stretches her arms
toward the sky,
the heavens,
the universe itself--
A tribute to all who lost their lives.
All who look upon her are entranced.
This is the spirit my people have lost.
Nobody talks about it.
They are far too afraid
Though it had been at least 50 years.
Fear was instilled
In their children
And their children’s children
Down the line.
Nobody talks about it.
V. One week later.
I’m on a train to Sopron
The once home
Of my grandparents.
I still have family there
Family who could not escape.
My cousin knew English
She had studied it at University.
The rest knew nothing.
Yet they were so kind
I instantly felt kin.
Fani took me to see a grave.
My grandfather’s father: Kornell.
We had bought a szegfu, a carnation
To lay upon the marked place.
A boulder.
That was the gravestone.
He had been a cave miner.
They sent the stone from Transylvania.
Green flowers, like polyps on the rock
“Cave roses,” she called them.
They were beautiful.
My fingers pensively
caressed the spiked
edging. It was strong.
Stronger than the petals
of a more delicate
and gentler flower.
How appropriate for this man
who lived in such a trying time.
And then she whispered
the epitaph:
Something about his spirit living
on through his descendants.
I smiled.
I felt I had known him all my life.
The sun was setting. We went home.
VI.
Lining the walls
Like lines of soldiers
Did the faces
From pictures look at me.
I shivered.
Her parents poured Palinka
My throat burned with fire
They took some for themselves.
I had asked about my grandparents
Why they left
How they escaped
Where their friends are now.
More Palinka poured into a glass.
Nobody talks about it. That is what I believed.
A sigh from one, and then the other
As they began to speak
How I wanted to understand them
In the language that was their own
My own, had my father taught me--
(He had no time to teach
While serving in the Army.)
He had his own wars to fight.
My cousin had translated for some time
As my eyes widened in understanding
My mouth, dry as the desert of memory
Lapsed into silence.
Another train to Budapest.
A tearful goodbye separating us.
So I returned to the tree of life
Akacfa utca, the street
on which my apartment resided.
VII.
Five months gone
And it’s time to go home
Or rather, to “go abroad”
To America . . .
now strange to me.
Finding my roots.
That is why I had come.
Across the world
Away from home
To my older home
To the home I didn’t know was home.
The taxi pulls over.
I threw in all my baggage, closed
the trunk and mumble
for the airport.
As he winds through time and space
my grey eyes fall
upon that hypnotic woman
towering above the hillside.
I wish the world could see it,
Could see her--
with tanks, but tiny toys
beneath her feet. Nothing
could oppress her
stop her
silence her.
Yet her people are too scared
to stand with her, to join
her in raising their arms,
their hands entwined in hers. No
they feared the past
would become the future.
So they didn’t talk about it.
But that noble heart beats true in them
If only they could see it
For time had not truly passed
Change had not yet reached them.
The wind stings my cheek
As I trek through the fog . . .
Maybe there is still hope for my people.
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