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.