Two Hungarian Refugees

Mid-century, in London,
Two Hungarian refugees,
Discovered they both
Loved Attila Jozsef
The great poet
Of their lonely land.

The discovery’s
Inevitable consequesce
Wasn’t hard to foresee:
The refugees set out
To translate their compatriot’s
Works into English.

First they fought over
Who would write
The introduction and
Who would translate;
In the end, there were
Two introductions and
Enough poems for
a small book.

They decided that Auden WH
Should be brought into the project;
They read in a paper that Auden
Was appointed professor at Oxford.
They call the university
And kept asking for Auden,
Spelling his name
Over and over again.
But their Hungarian accents
Proved too much for
Oxford porters.

They persisted and found Auden
And showed him the poems
And asked if they conveyed
The impression that their author
Was the great poetic genius of the century.
Auden was very polite and replied:
“They do not.”

Poet’s End

What was worse,
His grinding poverty
Or his growing schizophrenia?

For him, it was the disease
(Though his mother
Died of poverty).

He was obsessed by trains;
Staying in the country with his sister
He run after one slow cargo train.

He caught up and decided
He needed to let the train
Take his right arm.

He was clumsy;
After offering his arm
He got hit in the head.

He got killed.
His arm was found
Far away from his body.

At home they found a shirt
With the right sleeve cut off.
His name was Attila Jozsef.

Fortuitous Poem by Michael Scammell

Hungarian in his temper,
German in his industry,
Jewish in his intellectual ambition,
He was never comfortable in his own skin,
Doomed to oscillate between arrogance and humility,
Like one of those mercurial Russians
In the novels of Dostoevsky,
Whom Koestler so admired
And wished to emulate.

Fortuitous Poem by Matt Ridley

To my generation,

It is a dull utility,

As inevitable,

Ubiquitous,

And mundane

As water or air.

Its pylons and wires are ugly,

Its plugs tiresome,

Its failures infuriating,

Its fire risk frightening,

Its bills annoying,

And its power stations,

Monstrous symbols,

Of man-made climate change,

(Complete with Al Gore hurricanes

Coming from their stacks)

But try to see its magic.

Try to see it through the eyes

Of someone who has never known

Power that was invisible and weightless,

That could be transmitted miles through a slender wire

That can do almost anything,

From lighting to toasting,

From propulsion to music playing.

Two billion people

Alive today,

Have never turned on

A light switch.

Blueberry Cake

A sale on blueberries

At the local supermarket

Made me overbuy and search

For ways to use them up. 

At the age of 62

I baked my first (Internet recipe)

Sour cream blueberry cake;

Came out ok, though a bit too sweet. 

Many years ago,

I was elected by my mother

To visit once a month

An old friend of hers in a nursing home. 

I didn’t mind—it was

A chance to leave the apartment,

Take tramways, smoke cigarettes,

And eat a blueberry cake Miss Zofia baked. 

She had curly gray hair,

And thick eyeglasses;

She never complained and

Was always happy to see me. 

When things got bad

And my family got ready to leave

I came to say “good bye”—

The cake didn’t taste that well. 

Miss Zofia was philosophical: 

“Here at the home they notice,

‘A Jewess’, ‘doesn’t go to church’,

There it would be a synagogue

And I’d be a communist.”