Discussions with God

Zoltán Somlyó

1911

I

Going home on airless Elbow Street,
at three o’clock in the morning.
Lead me toward goodness, my God!
Peace-flowers bloom in these gray stones
and this dawn sky is peace.
Do You love me still, my God?
My debasement, my downward drift is ordained
and those who are meant to, will fall.
Be with me, Almighty One!
The dawn minutes come drizzling down
and the bell shrieks into their hearts.
My griefs have been legion, my God!
Christians have hounded me, Jews have mocked.
And women obtained for me nothing good.
They threw me out like a hollow nut.
At twenty, I loved them, at twenty blindly,
today my vague figure is pallid and grim:
I live in Your heart, my God.
There’s no rest for me, no night, no day,
just this dawn sky, this blue . . .
Do You love me, my God,
will You lead me, my God,
will You scourge me still, my God?

II

Is there no let up to these floors!
I’m late to bed and late to rise
and always the stairs before me.
Soldierly, strict, curious signs
and so far, so far off still the last.
I’m free to go up and free to go down,
why do I climb them, why descend?
How far will I go on the stairs of my life
before, to these whys, I receive a reply?
And the alien, woebegone, boarding-house rooms,
their walls sporting Christs and dolorous Marys,
and cobwebby, purposeless, sorrowful nails—
Fate’s hammered me into the same row as you . . .
Is there no let up to these forlorn floors!

III

Like a twist of hair on a doll’s little head
I huddle here, innocent and tawny.
My visitors: spring, summer, winter, and fall
stir up rain, storms, frost, snow upon me.
Some of my days are dark and booming,
like hoarse throats of cannon in a valley.
Oh God! Existence has swept your small servant
into destinies’ ice-crusted ditch.

Translated by
Anna
Bentley
.

Credits

Zoltán Somlyó, “Megbeszélések az istennel” [Discussions with God], A Kötetek 1902–1937 (Budapest: Múlt es Jövő Könyvkiadó, 2014), pp. 61–74.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 7.

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Creator Bio

Zoltán Somlyó

1882–1937

Born in Alsódomboru, Austro-Hungarian Empire (today Donja Dubrava, Croatia), Zoltán Somlyó was brought up in an impoverished home but attended a Hungarian-language secondary school and absorbed Hungarian culture. Standing in the European Decadent and bohemian tradition, his poetry engages themes of love and death, worldweariness, and loneliness. Writing poetry while working also as a journalist for a range of liberal and moderate conservative Hungarian newspapers and journals, he led a peripatetic life and struggled economically. He was the father of author György Somlyó.

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