Weöres Sándor: The seventh symphony (Hetedik szimfónia in English)
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Hetedik szimfónia (Hungarian)Mária mennybemenetele (Édesanyám emlékének) 1 Csíkos lepelből a láb kiáll, Burkolt lábszárak alszanak, Üdv néked, elszáradt anyaméh! Üdv néktek, imába-zárt kezek, Üdv néked, hétfájdalmu szív! Keskeny nyak, elbillent fej, tapadt haj, 2 Kórus Híjja, híjja, híjja 3 A végtelen, világos némaságot 4 Kórus Fényen át, lángon át Rózsa-ér, gerle-vér, Édesanyánk, ifju aránk, Mária Magasztalom őt, aki méhemben fogant Kórus Virágcsengők királynéja, Mária Az itélet nem enyém; a mérleg, a bárd Kórus Fénytelen mélybe lenn, Lenn telő rózsatő, Lengedező rózsamező, Húrként feszül Kóda Csillag-pályák asszonya, Mária, Aki hallottad ezt a dalt,
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The seventh symphony (English)The assumption of Mary
(To my mother’s memory)
1 Shadow, stone, linen, lime, the pillow under the skull’s vault, iron padlock, swaddling clothes, the knocking sundering clod, do not see ascend the dark of the body over the final flame, the world pried open by the smouldering chaplet of sweat.
Foot protrudes from the brindled shroud, its clotted veins coated with wax, a violet beam on the nail.
Shins ensheathed are sleeping, the tendon straight, the knee relaxed; olive trees line the path.
Hail to you, shrivelled womb! An armored insect in the wall’s fissure scratches the lip of the blind abyss, flowers its ensigns, its arms.
Hail to you, prayer-locked hands, plunging arches of a shrine, two rows of casketed tapers, ten swans’ wings immersed in dew, enfolded night-blooming flowers.
Hail to you, seven-pained heart! The scream, from the start its neck weighted with stone, falls down a bottomless well, fails of its journey.
Narrow neck, tilted head, sticky hair, lead-coin of the final ransom on the pale face, around the mouthhole and sunken eyes the senses’ cooled-off scatter of wrinkles, twig-knots of trampled-down acanthus, spoors of galloped-off steeds.
2 Shadow, night, silence, cold, crack, crackle, clay flies, beam cleaves, dust signs— Two new moons in the sky culminate, blazing mesh descends, spider-legged glowing coals race up, wings hover on gleaming roof, flock of lambs, harps, flutes, violin screeches, bell peals, horn replies— For faceless, ashy ancestor, face of gold, assembles bones, leans on an elbow, rears up, gives ear—
Chorus
Wailing, wailing, wailing for her own at the edge of dark! We saw her with her child in starlight; we were grazing our plump sheep, with the coming of spring we sheared the fleece, when winter came we flayed the hide; slowly, cloud-like, we drifted on the mirror of water filled with fleecy hills, our boat came ashore, she saw who we were, brambles tore our thin shoes, earth painted our brows. We’re shepherds, also sheep. Now for the shearing, now for the skinning, strew it in her path. Wailing, wailing, wailing for her own at the edge of dark.
3 Alternate choruses
The drone of oars infuses the infinite clear stillness, the curly breath-hue, faintly purplish, churns in the glistening white, a maelstrom of mast, a whirlpool of sails looms through, ferry of flame, bridge of haze, golden ark, fever’s nether side on a diamond mirror, circles, in the distance ripples, the rush and scurry of small ones, on the rainbow a smiling tear, veiny swish of milk-foliage, the woman’s festival alive in the world… (But we always cried. We were starving. What else could we do? We always cried.) …her skiff sparkling in the rush of spume, on the lusterless yellow sickle of heaven, on the giant azure scales of the eye, on the red wheel of the war-car, on the crest of the green monster, on the black mouthhold of cold, and at night she turns down your white bed, through every inferno she follows you, though the nest be razed she summons you back… (Bottom-up stumps with our roots upwards, earth cast us out. Nobody stoops for us.) … she kneels within you, my dear, and you become her, forsaking your chaplet whence color comes to the rose and light to the eye, and you feel her as you cover your chalice with the vagrant foggy shapes of the chasm and the numbered centuries of years with frenzied omens on their foreheads, impassioned, drank from… (Flowers crawling with worms, who wants the tattered petal while the spring dawn rains down?) … from the crusty dark ascending the distending moon’s shimmers, aroma that under the rind gathers to flame in secret veins, under the heart a regal star-crowned dream in the shade of a warm bower, falling clusters of grapes, red wine, the flame of the mother ablaze in the world… (Whom have I killed? Myself. Whom does it pain? Me. Leave me alone in her lap.) …the lovely hands close-clasped in prayer, clinging columns of kindness, a hazy roof-row of fingers, ten mother-wings of live silence, naked fingers in a sea of petals, the tenfold soundless ringing gleams, dispensing its brightness, its light, beamlessly, pathless as a kiss… (The salt of sweat in our bread. The taste of death in our meat. Around us the coffin-wall.) … she who stood under the cross unbroken by misery, stares with a child’s scared blue eyes at the frothing world on the cross, sobs at the sill of hell; in festering dens the dead wrapped in closely watched night wink at the wounding light… (Take from our hearts the dripping poison, take from our hearts the black maggot, take the ember from our hearts, take from our hearts the dark.) … the gleam of the pure blue eyes pierces through all the circuits mirrored in the curving hoop of space and the hundred-tunneled race of time; like a sweet drop on the nodding sedge, a sparkling bead of mutability, it is always replenished, always rolls off, the peace of the Virgin flows over the world… (We shiver, draw close our cloaks, have mercy on us, Blessed Virgin, pray for us, have mercy on us.)
4 Over the spring down spins off from fanning wings; light snow falls; young wine makes in big basins; on a thousand balconies a thousand armies; the shackled rage of the earth is still, everything fills with the clamor of wings:
Chorus
Through flame, through light wings the dark earth’s virgin, never are shadow and night more violently flung open, valley and peak, by the looking-dance, assault-waves of mazes of flowers setting the greyness ablaze.
Vein of rose, blood of dove, brimming chalice of wine, where the mountain-shadow plunges faith harvested the vines; blood-pearls of chamois in snow calls the hunter, where he climbs the trail is narrow, the space wide.
Dear mother, bashful bride, our blushing tender maid, our wings billow toward you, their thick combs quake like the sea; are you flying toward us, do you see us? we are rugs laid in your path, dear mother, be our spring.
Mary
I glorify him I conceived in my womb who raised to the sky my sickle of moon and set on my forahead a string of stars who made my cloak to be borne on the milky path who made my veil to be blown by the storm of sweetness who made my triumphant car to be flown by the living fires who peoples with armies my victorious progress who raises around me towers of endless song, as it pleases him; and it cannot be explained by the fiery armies, the misty generations turning under the furrows where I walk. My father from the beginning, I brought him forth who towers, three-headed pillar, with his triple forehead’s glory over the far-flung void, above the glistening crystal silence surfacing from the wake of creations, like a roof of lightning he covers me.
Chorus
Queen of flowerbells, assembled before you, welded around you, bell-hearts beat in a thousand bodies, a cupola of rays wavering, a tower of haze quavering, they peal for you, appeal to you: when our bell-metal chips, silence it out of your power.
Mary
It is not mine to judge; the scales, the sword are someone else’s; I never learned to strike, only to stroke; nor to starve, only to feed; to be hurt, but not to hurt; nor to take, only to ask. In the resonant silence, the anonymous silence, larvae and wedding-gowns blossom alike on me, the lion lies down with the lamb in my bosom. The babe defiles me, no stain left, he scratches my breast, a necklace of blood flows out, the heaving sea has more and will not miss it. The killer spatters me with blood, I wipe it off; revile me, I do not turn away my face. I am no stone wall returning caresses and blows measure for measure; I am no clay road returning steps and turnings measure for measure; I am no fountain of fire that exposes body and space as they manifest before it; I am only a nest that sheds what warmth there is. You who see me shining forth in glory, think for a moment: it does not come from me; a tear is my only treasure; so with you; my son’s wound my immeasurable possession and the agony of this world my gateless garden. The luxuriant tree of life lies in my lap, and if, torn off, you fall down under it, your powerful fist clutches my apron, you fell your head’s log on my knee. Do not fear: you are watched over by silence, tears, and me.
Chorus
There where there is no light, my heart is born among thorns, down where the nightingale nests, in the jungle of numberless moans; new threats buffet the planets, but the blest sleep on in peace, nectar-drops on their lips.
Down there a rose-tree blooms, dawn spreads out on the hill, fingers—weak and strong— proffer a feast; debris of ashes litters the hearth, but a purple flood in the depth proclaims eternal dawn.
Fields of roses swaying wisps of flame in the wind, bewitched by her bright eyes; she comes, turns slowly again, a rose-sea of waving babes clutches, clutches at her hem; death and time stand still.
Mutability, wire-like grows taut; cooled-off ancestral coal glows hot; patriarch from tomb’s dark hums to himself fulfilled words; the clod is quiet, lips stuck together; the sound of wings outspread forever.
Coda
Lady of orbits, Mary, protect Mary my mother, lest, torn from my sight, sorrow befall her.
You who have heard this song, a fragment only of the song that wrung the world’s heart: you who have heard this song: wake up from your sluggish dragons.
Bruce Berlind and
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