Budapest

In the Writers’ Bookshop on Andrassy út,

I sit sipping tea, watching the scene,

All the strangers leafing through books and reviews;

What dreams and ideas pullulate in those heads,

Inexplicable as my own?


On the stairs of the Pest riverbank,

Midway between the Chain bridge and Elizabeth bridges,

Two lovers kiss with ridiculous passion,

As if the Turks were about to reappear

And sever them with a sabre.


Riding the escalators in the underground stations,

I stare pretty girls in the face with sudden boldness,

A different man down here in the dark,

More human, less afraid.


On Nepsziget island,alighting,I hear

The sound of dancing from a restaurant,

The summer pleasures of the proletariat…

How alien my body is to me now.


In the Café Gerbeaud,staring into an empty coffee cup,

I feel the tremor of the Metro beneath,

The Minotaur’s doleful roar.


We live on the blades of our ice skates,

Whirling round the frozen lake below the castle,

Thrown outwards into space by centrifugal forces,

In this infinitely expanding universe.


Tricks and illusions become more beautiful than truth.

A billion baby spiders burst from the egg,

Hanging mysteriously by a thread.


What is it –frustrated love, perhaps-that drives me

To the night pharmacy, in search of something

For my pains, my ills, my unfortunate weakness.

Some call it hypochondria,

But I know better.

City of sieges, of deaths and rebirths,

Your stones are cemented with horror and grief,

The myriad permutations of grief.


Alone on the night bus, passing the windows

Of secret lives silhouetted by artificial light,

I watch the puppets dance inside my mind.


In the Király Baths I bask like a walrus,

Mesmerised by rainbow light-beams,

Spectres in the steam.


Perhaps, in my way, I might even attain

The effortless élan of Andras Hadik the hussar,

There on Castle Hill, horse and rider fused into one,

And the horse’s balls shiny from the superstitious touching

Of countless students on their way to exams.


Inexorably, the sad streets draw me:

Streetwalkers hawking their skin and bone,

Purgatorial hovels in dark wynds,

Where forgotten souls huddle in perpetual twilight,

Burning naked light bulbs in the darkness of day.


At dusk, when streetlamps’ novas ignite,

Too many thoughts and feelings come,

Too many phantom bridges across the flood.


I wander among the toppled colossi

Of dictators for whom the crowd once roared

In ecstasy and adulation, begging to be led,

Now cast aside,unvisited,unloved.