The Stenhouse Blog

Poetry Friday: Mama

May 8th, 2009

It is Mother’s Day on this Sunday, so this week’s poem is called “Mama” from the Hungarian poet Attila Jozsef. Some of poem is lost in translation, but it’s still a nice read.

Mama
Attila Jozsef

On Mama now my thoughts have dawdled
all of a week. Clothes-basket cradled
creaked on her hip; she’d climb the stairway
up to the drying-attic’s airway.

Then, for I was an honest fellow,
how I would shriek and stamp and bellow!
That swollen laundry needs no mother.
Take me, and leave it to another.

But still she drudged so quietly,
nor scolded me nor looked upon me,
and the hung clothes would glow and billow
high up above, with swoop and wallow.

It’s too late now to still my bother;
what a giant was my mother -
over the sky her grey hair flutters,
her bluing tints the heaven’s waters.

Entry Filed under: Poetry Friday