Translated by Watson Kirkconnell from the Magyar poem of Tibor Tollas.
This paragraph is from a paper I came across in English---
**(Free World! To you in this vese our voices come: to you we call, we tens and hundreds of thousands of Hungarians
who sojoun in the hell of prisons! OUr tongue falters too much in our dungeon and millions do not know what the poet
says. Foreign poets, our brothers! Translate us into the languages of your peoples, so that our message may reach
you! While in 1955 in Pest the Communists were spouting about legality, in the Vac prison they sealed up the windows
with sheet-metal, so as to take away even that much air and light.)**
Az eletbol csak ennyi feny maradt:
Csillagos eg, tenyernyi napsugar.
Ezt vartuk nap-nap, homalyos falak
Uregebol estenking-delutan.
S Elvettek ezt is, a tenyernyi napot,
Bebadogoztak minden ablakot
Of life without, only this gleam was left,
A tiny patch of stars, a glimpse of sun
In daily gloom within dim walls bereft,
We watched the vent for this as day was done.
This too they stole, this streak of sunlight thin
They've walled up every window tight with tin.
Tagult szemekkel kek tengeret latom
Napolynak, s fenylopartjai felett
Meg var a Vezez, pipal es a tajon
Barnara lesult boldog emberek...
Latjatok? Ejben elunk, mint vakok.
Bebadogoztak minden ablakot
In memory's eye, I mark the azure sea
At Naples, and beside the shining shore
Vusuvius waits and smokes. Can you, like me,
See happy, sun-browned swimmers by the score?
We live in night like men who blind have been:
They've walled up every window tight with tin.
Tizen fekszunk egy fullaszto szuk lyukba,
A szank kapkodja be a levegot,
Mint partra vetett halak kopoltyjja
Tatogunk meman - s erzed, nincs erod
Szivni az etel - s urulek - szagot,
Bebadigiztaj minden ablakot.
Our ten mouths gasping for the missing air,
Ten of us lie, in one close kennel pent,
As fish-gills on the bank might gasp despair.
To eat the food, which stinks of excrement,
Our stomachs lack the power to begin:
They've walled up every window tight with tin.
Mising paragraph in H
From the bright fragrance of the Alpine peaks,
The west wind flows freshness of bouquets:
Of virtue to the soul that distance speaks,
And smiling summits swell the hymn of praise.
But phthisis grips my cell-mate, dark as sin,
They've walled up every window tight with tin.
