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Kavanagh, Patrick: Krumplipermetezés (Spraying the Potatoes in Hungarian)

Portre of Kavanagh, Patrick
Portre of Tandori Dezső

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Spraying the Potatoes (English)

The barrels of blue potato-spray
Stood on a headland in July
Beside an orchard wall where roses
Were young girls hanging from the sky.

The flocks of green potato stalks
Were blossom spread for sudden flight,
The Kerr’s Pinks in frivelled blue,
The Arran Banners wearing white.

And over that potato-field
A lazy veil of woven sun,
Dandelions growing on headlands, showing
Their unloved hearts to everyone.

And I was there with a knapsack sprayer
On the barrel’s edge poised. A wasp was floating
Dead on a sunken briar leaf
Over a copper-poisoned ocean.

The axle-roll of a rut-locked cart
Broke the burnt stick of noon in two.
An old man came through a cornfield
Remembering his youth and some Ruth he knew.

He turned my way. ‘God further the work’.
He echoed an ancient farming prayer.
I thanked him. He eyed the potato drills.
He said: ‘You are bound to have good ones there’.

We talked and our talk was a theme of kings,
A theme for strings. He hunkered down
In the shade of the orchard wall. O roses
The old man dies in the young girl’s frown.

And poet lost to potato-fields,
Remembering the lime and copper smell
Of the spraying barrels he is not lost
Or till blossomed stalks cannot weave a spell.



Uploaded byP. T.
Source of the quotationhttps://www.irelandcalling.ie

Krumplipermetezés (Hungarian)

Kék krumplipermet: júliusi
Föld forgóján hordóstul állt ott
Egy kert fala mellett, melyen a rózsák,
Akár az égből lelógó lányok.

A zöld krumpliszár-seregek
Megfutni-kész virágban álltak;
Léha-kékben a Kerry Karcsúk,
Fehérben az Arrani Babásak.

És fönn a krumpliföld felett:
A nap ködfátyolszövete.
Forgókon pitypangok mutogatták
Szivük, melynek soha senkije.

Ott álltam, háti permetezővel,
Egy hordónál. Darázs hullt vitorlázva,
Holtan, egy vadrózsalevéllel
A réz-mérgezte óceánra.

Tengelyzörgés, kátyus szekér
Törte ketté a dél égett rudját.
Vénember jött, gabonaföld felől,
Emlegette valami ifjúkori Ruth-ját.

Jött felém. „Tartsa dógában az Isten."
A régi gazda-áldást visszhangozta.
Megköszöntem. Nézte a krumplisort.
Szólt: „Látom, maga ezt már jóra hozza."



Uploaded byP. T.
Source of the quotationT. D.

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