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Victor (Gyozo) Hatar

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Moriendi

For Peter Zollman

         ‘the arts and sciences are makeshift dams against death’
                                                        St Gregory of Nyssa

as I get up with aches and pains
      and leave the well worn bed where I recline
to bring the night’s deadbeat remains
      in sleepless bundles through the customs line

the sedative has no effect
      all guilty of neuralgia come to grief
my nights are permanently wrecked
      I’ve lost the luxury of pain relief

no matter how my bed is lined
      with blind shadows or beams of blazing light
in here I can no longer find
      that precious privilege: a painless night

oh poetry you deadly curse!
     there’s no escape from your unholy rhymes
you makeshift sandbag dams of verse!
     I’ve sworn to smash you up – a thousand times

it’s death – it is this surging sea
      that sandbag verses aren’t able to dam
resistance is sheer lunacy
      you’ve vowed to give it up – ad nauseam

you wake from weary Gorgon dreams
      from hundred-night long agonizing spells
and as you sit there crushed it seems
      that here is still here and not somewhere else

you press your protest – but who cares?
      the tide – the sharp end – leaps at you to strike
the Monster takes you unawares
      it looms up larger than the sandbag dike

you bargain – brute you’ve lost your sense!
      wring every last drop of sweat from your hide
heir of your four spent Elements
      in dying cadence – wait to end the ride

[PZ]

Translated by Peter Zollman

Page(s) 160

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