The Trump by György Faludy

(August 2012)

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History cannot be predicted.

The girls of today are lovelier, brighter,

the boys more sporty and more cheerful

and far less erudite.

Some seven nations fabricate A-bombs,

like machineguns or cannon of old.

If you worry, they will reassure you: We

There are a lot more than a billion

Chinese. We are not interested

in them. They work and keep their silence.

What if they make a request?

The mighty sheets of Arctic ice

melt beneath the polar bears.

Will the rising oceans spare us

behind our seawalls built of prayers?

Our great green plain becomes a dust cloud,

a dirt-grey, dry, deserted dump.

Only the Voice of God could help. But

the Lord never plays a trump.

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Last night again I read, as I often do,

some poetry in bed until very late.

Light and broken clouds in disarray.

My spirit soars. I raise an arm towards them

(in an appropriate greeting to the brightness)

until I pause and freeze and shudder frightened:

for I see my hand, but not my fingertips.

Above the divan, I note that the silver frame

of the Italian painting is slightly bent on one side.

I leap from the bed excited. As I finger the frame:

it never has been straighter than today.

I settle at the table and reach for the papers, in

a casual gesture in my plight, despite

not just a fear, despite the foreknowledge that this

unfolding horror is only about to begin.

I can still negotiate the banner headlines

but not the standard size print, as the tiny writing

blurs into a lengthy dirt-grey smudge on the white

without a single letter that I can distinguish.

I cannot tell whose letter is put in my hand.

I cannot even read what I have written, and

I might as well discard my own library.

to pursue my poetry still, on losing my sight?

What will become of me? I walk my path,

the crutch upon my left. At right, the wife.

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beside the earth, Your anvil and domain.

upon the scaffolding, my Lord, in vain.

Your fleeting rainbow has remained unfolded.

It glows beyond my reach within the rocks.

Although I have grown clumsy, violated

my soul reflects the light that You have shone.

confines? If You still love an aging sinner,

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