Two Poems by Miklós Radnóti
Clouded Sky

The moon hangs on a clouded sky.
I am surprised that I live.
Anxiously and with great care, death looks for us
and those it finds are all terribly white.


Sometimes a year looks back and howls
then drops to its knees.
Autumn is too much for me. It waits again
and winter waits with its dull pain.


The forest bleeds. The hours bleed.
Time spins overhead
and the wind scrawls
big dark numbers on the snow.


But I am still here
and I know why and why the air feels heavy -
a warm silence full of tiny noises circles me
just as it was before my birth.


I stop at the foot of a tree,
Its leaves cry with anger.
A branch reaches down. Is it strangling me?
I am not a coward. I am not weak, I am


tired. And silent. And the branch
is also mute and afraid as it enters my hair.
I should forget it, but I
forget nothing.


Clouds pour across the moon. Anger
leaves a poisonous dark-green bruise on the sky.
I roll myself a cigarette,
slowly, carefully. I live.

Jun 8 1940






The Terrifying Angel

The terrifying angel is invisible and silent
inside me, he doesn't scream today.
But then I hear a slight noise,
no louder than a grasshopper's jump.
I look around you and don't find anything.
It's him. But he's cautious now. He's getting ready.
Save me, Oh you who love me, love me bravely.
He hides when you're here. But as soon as you leave
he's back. He rises from the bottom of the soul,
screaming. And screaming he accuses me.
This insanity works inside me like poison.
He doesn't sleep much, lives both in and outside of me,
and when the moon is out, and in the white darkness,
he runs through the meadow in whistling sandals.
He searches my mother's grave an wakes her up.
"Was it worth it?" "Was it worth it?"
He whispers to her about rebellion, about giving in.
"You gave birth to him and he dies of it!"
Looking at me, sometimes he tears off
the pages of the calendar too soon.
"How long" and "where to"
depend on him forever now. Last night
his words fell into my heart
the way stones fall into water,
forming rings, wobbling, and spinning.
I was just going to bed, you were already asleep.
I stood there naked when he came in
and started to argue with me quietly.
There was a weird smell, his
breath chilled my ear. "Go ahead!"
He urged. "Skin shouldn't cover you.
You're raw meat and bare nerves.
Tear it off! After all, bragging about skin
is like bragging about prison,
it's crazy.
That thing all over you is only an illusion.
Here, here's the knife.
It doesn't hurt. It only takes a second, there's only a hiss!"

And the knife woke up on the table and flashed.

Aug 4 1943