For Évi

The way I brought you here,

mercy’s weave was upon me,

and girls with knotted hair could smell

the new chill’s daybreak petals.

Since then you have been polishing

my body, like the trunk

of a young birch, until I bleed.

I saw you when all these things began,

and I kept it up to the end, so I could tell the tale,

the way a tender child rewords the first spring sowing.

For the sake of pure water, the swallows don your blue;

over the flawless fields you thunder forth

enemies of comfort and sloth:

storm and darkness, so that

there will be something at stake when I

come again to wreathe uncommon love.

The original Hungarian poem was published in Csenger Kertai’s poetry collection Hogy nekem jó legyen (Budapest: Napkút Kiadó, 2021).