GATHER AROUND YOURSELF


Tour Guide as Foreword


Reader, you're now entering a museum
to observe a stranger (Group Portrait of Myself )
who has absolutely no idea about the meaning of his life (Mr. Somogyi).
He would like to scratch his head (The Head)
but not even that would help the future (Horoscope).
He realized that it was all in vain (Short Lyrical Oration),
even fairy tales prove a sad example (Animal Tale),
and the war is coming closer and closer (Information).
The seasons have passed over him (Obligatory Spring Poem),
and though he lives here (Budapest),
he is fleeing towards the stars (Legend in Prose).
He thinks of the plants as his siblings (Family Event),
and the animals, too, are of more interest to him (Mooky)
than HOMO SAPIENS (Lost Generation),
who is making ready to kill. (Peace) —

Love rarely happens (Expedition),
though when he was an adolescent (Manhood)
he thought women were all different (Parliamentarianism),
but by now he only feels desire (Reverence)
and disappointment (Commemorative Plaque).

Lajos Vándor has lived twenty-four years to date (Typewriter),
yet has lived through humanity in its entirety (World History),
and even if he wasn't conceived in Original Sin (Blood Pact),
he, too, is just human (The Human)
and not a millionaire (Poem of the Unemployed).
He traveled the paths alone (Arm in Arm),
he was alone, and he will continue alone (First Person Singular)
because wherever he went (Traveling)
only the scenery changed (Study Tour):
he remained a picture frame (Art Gallery)
and a soul in uniform (Budapest Division).


I AM A WANDERER


— a modern monk
who wanders in a double-breasted suit.
All things I like just equally;
in the fields I dream about houses,
and in the city about evergreen pines.
I am a wanderer of millennia,
in Rome a Goth,
a German in Flanders,
I wore a toga and the Order of the Garter,
and wherever I was
I was always a stranger —
and at home, too — always just a stranger.
I am a wanderer — a frivolous modern poet,
an ode I write for as little as two pengos,
and let this quiet, simple offer of mine
not offend literary ears:
for ten pengos, a four-page short story
I will personally home-deliver.

I am a wanderer — a modern monk
who wanders in a double-breasted suit.
I was a trader in the temple of Jesus
and a publisher in Academia —
I was always the other and always a stranger,
always other than my own self:
in Rome a Goth,
a German in Flanders
on paper the writing,
in writing the letter,
in the fields I roofed houses,
onto the asphalt I sowed the seeds,
and even to myself I am a stranger:
because I was a German fighter in Flanders
and armistice in war —
I was always wholly other than myself,
the monk who wanders in a double-breasted suit.

In Rome I recited Greek poems,
kissed the hands of hetaerae —
I was always the other and always a stranger;
a petit-bourgeois in the nightclub
and in the soup kitchen a dandy.
I am a wanderer — a modern monk
who wanders in a double-breasted suit,
who would have liked to walk naked,
and knots his tie with care.
I was always the other and always a stranger,
always other than my own self:
in Rome a Goth, a German in Flanders
on paper the writing, in writing the letter —
in the fields I roofed houses,
onto the asphalt I sowed the seeds,
and even to myself I am a stranger.

I am a wanderer — a modern monk,
the lone wanderer of the eternal other.


RIDING ON CLOUDS


I am my moods' cuckolded Don Juan,
and half of Europe has fallen pregnant
from my daydreams.

Yesterday, the rising Sun
found me in flagrante with the Moon
and turned the horizon...