Verse illustration for Attila József's poem: Consciousness

More about Verse illustration for Attila József's poem: Consciousness

A painfully beautiful poem that is still relevant today...

Consciousness (excerpt)
1
The dawn dissevers earth and skies
and at its pure and lovely bidding
the children and the dragonflies
twirl out into the sunworld's budding;
no vapour dims the air's receding,
a twinkling lightness buoys the eyes!
Last night into their trees were gliding
the leaves, like tiny butterflies.

2
Blue, yellow, red, they flocked my dream,
smudged images the mind had taken,
I felt the cosmic order gleam -
and not a speck of dust was shaken.
My dream's a floating shade; I waken;
order is but an iron regime.
By day, the moon's my body's beacon,
by night, an inner sun will burn.

3
I'm gaunt, sometimes bread's all I touch,
I seek amid this trivial chatter
unrecompensed, and yearn to clutch,
what has more truth than dice, more matter.
No roast rib warms my mouth and platter,
no child my heart, foregoing such -
the cat can't both, how deft a ratter,
inside and outside make her catch.

4
Just like split firewood stacked together,
the universe embraces all,
so that each object holds the other
confined by pressures mutual,
all things ordained, reciprocal.
Only unbeing can branch and feather,
only becoming blooms at all;
what is must break, or fade, or wither.

5
Down by the branched marshalling-yard
I lurked behind a root, fear-stricken,
of silence was the living shard,
I tasted grey and weird-sweet lichen.
I saw a shadow leap and thicken:
it was the shadow of the guard -
did he suspect? - watched his shade quicken
upon the heaped coal dew-bestarred.

6
Inside there is a world of pain,
outside is only explanation.
the world's your scab, the outer stain,
your soul's the fever-inflammation.
Jailed by your heart's own insurrection,
you're only free when you refrain,
nor build so fine a habitation,
the landlord takes it back again.

1933-1934
/Attila József/