afieldnotebook

Everyday History

To rise
and make fire in the stove,
in the brain after the reeling of the smoke,
in the ducts of the bones cold from sleeplessness,
and to seek the way to the hand,
from the hand to the drinking glass,
the remnants of yesterday's ashes in the hollow of the face,
perhaps a bird-blown windstorm will revive them yet,
and to wander
from one body to another,
and like nomadic kinds: to seek the everyday motherland,
and, having found it
or not,
to spend the night in a single smile's tent,
and to walk in the Creation like a stranger,
to breathe in the dawn
poison of the trees,
the iron dust of the towns,
to go to all the wars,
to wear the lilac leaves around the neck
like a dogtag
and understanding everything
and understanding nothing, to part with what I love
and rage for what I loved,
brazenly, like my own life's
hired man.

-Sandor Csoori, 1992