Charon's Ferry

Gyula Illyés (1902-83) was one of Hungary's premier cultural figures: poet, novelist, playwright, editor, translator, and literary and cultural historian. His poems have appeared in many journals, including Connecticut Poetry Review, PEN International, Poetry East, and Webster Review. He is the editor of Once upon a Time: Forty Hungarian Folk-Tales and the author of the novel People of the Puszta and What You Have Almost Forgotten: Selected Poems of Gyula Illyés. Bruce Berlind is the translator of Birds and Other Relations: Selected Poetry of Dezsö Tandori. He lives in upstate New York.  

Translator's Acknowledgments
Translator's Introduction

I . . . Rocking . . . 

Flood
Hope in the Air
The Last Home
Charon's Ferry
In a Blacksmith's House on the Puszta
White
Photograph
Crows
Evening Song
The Found Caravan Diary
Termites
The Salvation of the Damned
The Year Drops Anchor, Tihany
Grip
Ebb Tide
Successful Effort
World Collapse
There Will Be No War

II     One Sentence on Tyranny

One Sentence on Tyranny

III    Nothingness Is Nearing

Consternation
Postcard from the Provinces
On the World of Faith
A Nest for Seasons in the Concrete Jungle
Procession in the Fog
Phoenix
Christian Humanity
World Order
You Could Have Spotted Me
With a Stranger
Scene from a Drama
The Final Journey of the Leaves
Under the Ice-Bright Moon
To Those Who Dread War
Two Flashes in the Past
Transformed Regions
Unsteadily
The Persecuted
From a Philosopher's Insights
Nothingness Is Nearing
On a Private Golgotha
Hearty Welcome
In the Armchair of Creaking Bones
Execrable Cold
Man and Mob
Omnipotence
[My wife had two walls one brick thick]
Generals, Victory
Elephant Cemetary
You Urged Me On
[How shall I end?]