The first casualty
then the second casualty.
Death has to lie down

to collect itself
and to continue counting.
The sky vanishes

in clouds of numbers.
Then rain. Then flooding. Then time
gnawing its knuckles

and its bright red nails.

Some say land is holy
Some say it’s divine
Some say land is folly
Some say land is mine

Home is where the heart is
Declare contesting parties
And that is where wars start
Within the landed heart.

Even now there are
places where a thought might grow,
even there perhaps

or County Wexford
but where that thought leads us is
to a burned-down house,

where every thought grows
beyond itself. The dark shed
opens. The mushrooms

still want elbow room.

To return is to have left
Ithaca or Budapest.
Your companion on wild seas:
Odysseus or Ulysses.
Home is waiting like dead air,
But once you dock there’s no home there.

There in the darkness
lies the day wrapped in its sheets
talking to itself.

Cruising cars vanish
into memory of day.
Footsteps fade like speech.

The last hours whisper
and scurry away on mouse feet.
We too are sleeping

as the great stones move.

The old get older
but the young don’t get younger
declare the sages

whose books fill our ears
with wax, among other things.
Their truths keep nagging

under the loose skin
like little lightnings that strike
the same spot. Where now,

body electric?

Morning song

Such aching after
the unknown that has vanished.
You wake up one day

sensing something lost.
Is it time? Is it daylight?
The birds are singing

out of an ancient
dream older than anything,
more full of singing

and pain, and morning.

These short lines of life
don’t add up to very much,
like odd crumbs of bread

the jackdaw pecks at
on the station platform. See,
they’re gone. I throw more

and the jackdaw waits
his chance and comes very close.
Just crumbs but they are

inside the jackdaw.

Blackbirds over a field: flakes of burnt paper.

The inhabitants
of the city continued
inhabiting it

but the buildings lacked
their old assurance. They stood
like vague memories

that woke them at night
with echoes of ghost stories
no one ever told

and dust ten miles high.

The slender trees of Thetford Forest, like negotiating the strings of a harp.

On Distance

Ever more distant,
its cries sharper but fainter,
the place means something

from another time,
in a dialect so strange
you can’t understand

what it is trying
to say, or swear, or mutter
into the machine

of deaf ear, mute song.

Pranks

A little late now
to row back from history
and expectation.

The monsters persist
in their monstering, urbane
as their pranks may be.

Oh you small countries,
how handsome you look at night.
How comical, quaint

your poison-tipped teeth.

What is spring saying?
Spring whispers fear and trembling.
Why does spring whisper?

Because all things do.
But is there not energy
and joy? Lots of it.

And is there beauty?
Beauty remains bountiful
but fear and trembling

whisper in the eaves.

Happy Hungarian poetry day

George Szirtes

A flash in the pan
is worth two birds in the bush,
the old man told me.

A ha’porth of tar
is the dark side of the moon,
he sagely added.

He was a prophet
in his own country, he said,
not without honour

nor without two birds.

Cromer Pier
Is Pier of the Year,
News of great cheer
To Langoustine’s ear.
A perfect end
To a lobster’s career.

Carol Rumens's Poem of the Week Guardian Books is 'Diesel or steam' from the title-sequence of George Szirtes's 2021 Bloodaxe Books collection #FreshOutoftheSky .
theguardian.com/books/2024/apr…

In today's Guardian. Carol Rumens on a poem from my most recent book of poems, Fresh Out of the Sky, with a link to an article in English by Hungarian poet and scholar, Katalin Szlukovényi, at the end.

theguardian.com/books/2024/apr…

How late it is now.
Yes, but it didn’t seem late.
It was a soft night,

like this, the stars dim
and the moon drifting among
clouds. Was it cold then?

No. It was like this,
soft, a night to be born on
or kissed on. How late

is it now? Just late.