To Flora ( extracts)

Question

To Flora
( Attila Jozsef)

Now I have to moon about the idea,
That if your love weren’t real,
I could put out my dear desires, ,
I could close my tired black eyes.

Because it’s good to be dead. I might
be happy if you didn’t love me. At night
I would sit near the white-foamed green
chatty star-clouds . Or, as has never been,

sit on the edge of calmness, on the beach,
on the side of the emptiness, which
is not empty, just gaze at the worlds around,
as we gaze at flowery bush in the ground.
…

“ ‘cause you love me, and I can sleep in peace,
I can confess it to you as I breathe,

being caught by the time passing by me,
the room in myself I couldn’t touch,
That’s why my soul is public property
And that’s why I love you so much.”

Maj · Accepted Answer

One of the best love poems I have read.

MichaelSlipp · Answer

To Flóra

Something obliges me to muse again
That if you didn’t love me, I could then
Smother the coal that bankrupts me
And shut my tired eyes, lastingly.

For it is good to die. I might rejoice
Should you not love me so. Beside the bois-
Terous nebulae and green skies sown
With clouds, I’d sit myself alone

Upon the farther shores of tranquilness,
The banks of void which is not void, and guess
At worlds set in their galaxies
As you might guess at budding trees.

One boyhood summer when I gibbed the spar
As deck-hand on the rattling tug Tatar,
A loafing, lovely day shone bright
And like a student of delight,

I marvelled at the Danube in its rising.
I watched it send the leafy boughs capsizing,
And dash itself in furrowed streams
That nibbled into wooden beams.

So many lovely melons—flashing hulls
Swept wherever the yellow torrent pulls—
You’d not believe it could be true.
Nor I, were I not telling you.

Red apples undulated in their wake.
Green peppers skimmed the tide that for my sake
Cast up now this, now that good treasure.
The tugboat rocked, then took her leisure.

And that is how I’d view space deepening.
How beautiful!—nodding at each new thing—
To search there for the shade of blue
Whose purity could flatter you.

The universe: a superadded gift.
So, like an inundation, life will lift
And crash against the shores of death
Past deeps of space, of hearts, our breath,

Beyond the frontier’s silent passageway,
Just like the Danube on that summer day. . .
You love me. I can deeply rest.
To you then, let it be confessed

That, caught shame-faced by this impermanence,
I could not pen myself within me. Hence
My soul is public property.
That’s why I love you boundlessly.

MichaelSlipp · Answer

To Flóra

Something obliges me to muse again
That if you didn’t love me, I could then
Smother the coal that bankrupts me
And shut my tired eyes, lastingly.

For it is good to die. I might rejoice
Should you not love me so. Beside the bois-
Terous nebulae and green skies sown
With clouds, I’d sit myself alone

Upon the farther shores of tranquilness,
The banks of void which is not void, and guess
At worlds set in their galaxies
As you might guess at budding trees.

One boyhood summer when I gibbed the spar
As deck-hand on the rattling tug Tatar,
A loafing, lovely day shone bright
And like a student of delight,

I marvelled at the Danube in its rising.
I watched it send the leafy boughs capsizing,
And dash itself in furrowed streams
That nibbled into wooden beams.

So many lovely melons—flashing hulls
Swept wherever the yellow torrent pulls—
You’d not believe it could be true.
Nor I, were I not telling you.

Red apples undulated in their wake.
Green peppers skimmed the tide that for my sake
Cast up now this, now that good treasure.
The tugboat rocked, then took her leisure.

And that is how I’d view space deepening.
How beautiful!—nodding at each new thing—
To search there for the shade of blue
Whose purity could flatter you.

The universe: a superadded gift.
So, like an inundation, life will lift
And crash against the shores of death
Past deeps of space, of hearts, our breath,

Beyond the frontier’s silent passageway,
Just like the Danube on that summer day. . .
You love me. I can deeply rest.
To you then, let it be confessed

That, caught shame-faced by this impermanence,
I could not pen myself within me. Hence
My soul is public property.
That’s why I love you boundlessly.

To Flora ( extracts)

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