The original Hungarian text of this poem by Zoltán Zelk has been published many times: most recently, with carefully corrected title, in the literary journal Eső (Winter 2018), where I first encountered it. To my knowledge, the only translation into English is my own, which I present here, in honor of the international Holocaust Remembrance Day. I hope that showing it here on my blog will not stand in the way of its publication elsewhere one day. The poem deserves to be known around the world.
I read this translation aloud at a special private lucheon held by the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture and its Cowan Center for Education in the fall of 2019; Gyula Jenei (poet and founding editor of Eső), Marianna Fekete, and I were the featured guests of the Cowan Center’s 2019 Education Forum, of which the luncheon was the closing event. At this luncheon we met Will Evans, founder and publisher of Deep Vellum, who will be publishing my translation of Jenei’s collection Mindig más in February 2022. We also had the honor of meeting the poet Frederick Turner, who has collaborated with the scholar, writer, and Holocaust survivor Zsuzsanna Ozsváth on numerous translations. It was a sincere and momentous occasion, worthy of long memory. We are so grateful for the hospitality of Claudia MacMillan, Larry Allums, all the staff, and everyone who attended the luncheon and other events.
For the Hungarian text (“Dorosici alkony, 1943”), please go here.
Dorosic Nightfall, 1943
Zoltán Zelk
Translated by Diana Senechal
Thirty-three have perished in the pit.
The thirty-fourth collapsed before our eyes.
How many we have buried in two weeks!
we could have stacked the bodies to the skies.
And then we did! The dreadful grey tower!
Too much to bear, even in the sky;
staggering down the tower’s countless stairs,
beside the grave appeared Adonai.
And then he wailed an upward-swelling prayer,
its melody the tint of smoke and char—
and trembling they whirled below the earth,
the typhus-decimated legs and arms.
He tore his chest apart, burned all his rags,
fell to the ground, and soaked himself in mud;
cursing the Sixth Day of his creation,
he called back the Darkness and the Void.
My terrified companions might have whispered:
“An unhinged cantor… burying his brother…”
but I knew well that this was: Adonai!
and each one fallen in the pit, his brother.
Everything here is his brother, child, and sin,
everything that he long ago released:
the fire, the lice, the plague, and the infected
summer nightfall with its sour green taste.
Pounding his forehead into root and stone,
this is why he bows before Affliction,
this is why he moans with barren lip;
he is as speechless as before Creation.
Only the smoke of his terrible song came out,
and even it got stuck on top of a thin
branch, and in the sudden lack of sound,
we felt raw terror freezing on our skin.
And once again the curses and the blows,
—our numbed guards snapped back into their mien—
again the movement throbbing to the bone,
the failing muscles’ lousy dance again.
Always one and the same insensate rhythm.
But our shovels kept on tossing, tossing high,
and clods of earth rained down upon the heavens,
and in this way we buried Adonai.
