Miklós Radnóti: In a Restless Hour

In a Restless Hour

Windswept heights in the sunshine were my dwelling.
Oh homeland, now in a valley you have imprisoned
The broken son you clothe in shadow,
No heavenly play of sunlight here to soothe me.

Crags above me, glorious sky in the distance,
I must live in the depths with speechless boulders.
Must I be dumb too? What would move me
Now to poetry? Death? Who is it asks me,

Who calls me to a reckoning for my life
Or for this poem here, which remains a fragment?
Know this: nobody will mourn you
Or bury you, nor will the valley cradle

Or the wind scatter you. Yet the high cliff-side –
If not today then tomorrow – will echo, singing,
What I’ve to speak, which sons and daughters
Will understand, the more as they grow in stature.

(10 January 1939)

Miklós Radnóti
/Translated by Clive Wilmer and George Gömöri/