Beneath Pannonia's Sky translated from the Hungarian by Thomas Land The road turns by the press-house and a white mud village greets me huddling to the right, blue winding polished hill road that I see with an intruder's curiosity with not a soul just trees and tidy lines of modest homes with aerials and vines past wine vaults and beneath Pannonia's sky a grey prophet — a little donkey — ambles by she waves back with a mother-of-pearl ear — the prosperous plebeian class dwelled here when carts of travelling merchants left a track along these gentle hills five centuries back: calm bakers of brown loaves and honey-bread they watched above the mounting thunderhead behind them a castle resounded with music and dance of the Renaissance with Italian elegance and roads took root wherever their carts would ply their trundling trade beneath Pannonia's sky — in his brown caftan tightly wrapped, one day my own forefather might have come this way and where I stand he might have glanced and slowed his pace to preach with caution by the road perhaps that other one, more sober, plain made fancy saffian footwear by the lane as his wife with amber eyes surveyed the ground and kept her guard against a hostile hound and a toddler played about her gathering herbs from these very slopes and she would sing — their psalms and their tanned leathers' scent would fill the air and travel far beyond the hill surviving winters, with the gales they flew and from the maggots' entrails rose anew... these lands caress them softly like a shroud they came unasked and graceful like a cloud they were, as I protect and hold to my own soil, protected by Pannonia's sky: both ways the road winds blue beyond your span so leave this land and run, run... if you can. Ágnes Gergely |
