Gratitude
The idiotic silence of state holidays
is no different
from that of Catholic Sundays.
People in collective idleness
are even more repellent
than they are when purpose has harnessed them.
Today I will not
in my old ungrateful way
let gratuitous love decay me.
In the vacuum of
what helps me escape
is the memory of your face and thighs,
your warmth,
the fish-death smell of your groin.
You looked for a bathroom in vain.
The bed was uncomfortable
like a roof ridge.
The mattress smelt of insecticide,
the new scent of your body mingling with it.
I woke to a cannonade
(a round number of years ago
something happened). You were still asleep.
Your glasses, your patent leather bag
on the floor, your dress on the window-catch
hung inside out--so practical.
One strap of your black slip
had slithered off.
And a gentle light was wavering
on the downs of your neck, on your collar bones,
as the canon went on booming
and on a spring poking through
the armchair's cover
fine dust was trembling.
-Gyorgy Petri, translated from Hungarian
-"The fish-death smell of your groin." The connection between "death" and "groin" seems particularly potent, given the association with a woman's "groin" being a place of life/birth.
-The poem opens devoid of humans--it places a view on human life, broadly, then jumps in to a semi-narration.
-The poem ends unexpectedly with three lines, where as the previous stanzas range between five and seven. Likewise, this narrowing of lines comes alongside the narrowing of scope: we suddenly focus on the minute, "fine dust trembling."
-Interesting collection of verbs: slithering, wavering, trembling, mingling. Seem to encompass both uncertainty and movement?
-What's the purpose of the first stanza? Why such sweeping accusations/judgments? "Idiotic silence," "state holidays," and particularly the broad term "people." The poem does not tell us what type of state holidays, why a silence is being observed, why it irritates him so badly.
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