In Memoriam Istvan Farkas

Companion, come at last
To our last hour, we share
No pain, my sorrow’s past.
I dance on light and wear
Light’s dazzle in my breast.
My dear companion, rest,
I leave you now to sever
Memory and hope forever.

“I brought you through unending
Whirlpools of hidden love
Safe, and I bore the rending
Talons of pain, and strove
All night with faceless fears
For your sake, and my tears
Were salt, salt, for your sake.
It is I whom you forsake.”

Companion, tool put by
As useless now, I stare
Through light, superb of eye
And weightless rest on air.
What arrow is it finds me?
What is the weight that binds me?
O plumed with pain I fall,
Companion, to your call.

“I sing the nosegay hours.
My father’s hand in mine.
The secret speech of flowers
(Such fragments heard!) A pine
Fingers the silks of cloud.
White heron on the loud
Winds across Alfold come.
Syllables like a drum.”

Companion, wandering
With childhood’s quickening tongue,
Once, saying was the thing-
N ow world and word are sprung
Apart-

“I see once more
Balaton’s level shore.
Father, I see the white
Heron dissolve in light.”

I’ll wear no mortal dress.
Why should the spirit kneel?

“Alfold, horizonless,
Your galloping herdsmen wheel.
O childhood lost and found!
My human wheat is ground
To the wafer of this pain.
O unhorizoned plain!

“In fallen blood I lie.
I dream, I shall not wake.
Though men and cities die
Burning for freedom’s sake,
Yet each man dies alone.”

Look, the white her-on’s gone
Soaring, and does not grieve,
And hope and freedom live