It's Still Life

Csárdás (as the ancestors told it)

First,
a single note.
Thin as winter smoke
slips from the fiddle
and winds through the room
like an old woman’s blessing.

It is the colour of dusk
on the Great Plain,
the colour of stories
whispered beside the stove
when wolves were still believed in.

The bow drags slowly:
sír a hegedű,
the fiddle cries,
and every listener remembers
someone who is gone.

But then,
ah, then,
the fire wakes.

Boot heels strike the boards
like hooves on packed earth.
Skirts flare, red as paprika,
wild as flame on fat.

The room becomes
a spinning tale
of lovers who ran away,
of mothers who prayed too loudly,
of sorrows that refused
to stay buried.

This is no music.
This is spellwork.

A prayer shouted
with the whole body
to any god who will listen:

If you give me grief,
I will turn it into thunder.
If you give me silence,
I will tear it open with joy.

And the fiddle,
bless it,
laughs and cries at once,
like every Magyar heart
that ever lived long enough
to break and dance again.