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Attila Jozsef (1905-1937)

Attila Jozsef was one of the most outstanding Hungarian poets in the 20th century.

Based in St. Louis, Michael Castro is co-founder of the literary organization and magazine River Styx, in operation since 1975. A pioneer of literary multi-culturalism through his work with River Styx Magazine and as the director of the River Styx at Duffs Poetry Series, Castro has published in The Black American Literature Forum; The U.S, Latino Review; World Edge (Japan); Voices Within the Ark: The Modern Jewish Poets; Jewish American Poets: Poems, Commentary, and Reflections; and Sephardic American Voices: Two Hundred Years of a Literary Legacy. He has authored Interpreting the Indian: Twentieth Century Poets & the Native American, and traveled in India as a Fulbright Scholar, interviewing East Indian poets for his radio program POETRY BEAT. His translations of contemporary Hungarian poets with Gabor G. Gyukics have been widely published in magazines like Exquisite Corpse and Pembroke and are collected in Swimming in the Ground: Contemporary Hungarian Poetry (2002).

Gabor Gyukics is a Hungarian-American poet and literary translator. Along with Michael Castro, he is co-translator of Attila Jozsef's A Transparent Lion (Green Integer), and Attila Balogh's Gypsy Drill (Neshui Press.)


Attila Jozsef	Michael Castro	Gabor Gyukics

Nothing

Attila Jozsef (1905-1937)

Translated by Michael Castro & Gabor G. Gyukics

Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing.
Let it be, not to be,
Let it be, not to be—
let's say: Edith.

Invisible, yellow little chicken
pecking the stars now.

Maybe dawn is breaking, maybe Budapest is on fire,
maybe make-up is melting
on the face of a sweating giantess.

Cars murmur, shutters trundle,
seas thunder, people flood.

That obnoxious house at the corner makes me angry—
it's like tinea on the face of a child.

Where I have just arrived
either this morning is unknown, or this railway station is unknown.

I have no luggage.
I've forgotten something—I wish I could remember.
One: nothing.
Two: nothing.
Three: nothing.
It's just as strange as this railway station,
that there is nothing at all.

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