NATURE IN BLACK AND WHITE
Weiner Sennyey Tibor: Community
Emptiness is just emptiness,
fullness is fullness.
Emptiness is not fullness,
nor is fullness emptiness.
Yet emptiness is filled with
emptiness, and fullness is
empty of its own plenty.
This is how we are among us,
for everyone is there
within everyone else,
yet within ourselves,
there’s only us.
(Translation: Hajdu Petra)
FORMS OF LIFE
Weiner Sennyey Tibor: Exposure
Thunder rolls and lightning strikes.
No. The rain is yet to fall.
We huddle close, the two of us,
like twins curled up within the womb.
Look: a dry flash snaps;
colors scatter into glints:
we all resolve into an image.
In the light, man is but form and hue.
Outside, at last, the rain begins.
Our memories are sodden films.
We huddle close, the two of us,
like twins curled up within the womb.
(Translation: Hajdu Petra)
Weiner Sennyei Tibor: Perseids
We are Perseids, each and all;
touching the atmosphere our light
flares up, then yields to the dark.
We are blessed, if we may bear
the weight of a stranger’s prayer.
(Translation: Hajdu Petra)
AMONG THE MINUSCULE
Weiner Sennyey Tibor: The Most Fearsome
To grow used to the cicada-concert,
to the cryptic rustle of tiny creatures,
to the pine needles’ and cones’
muffled yet persistent thuds,
to the stones’ devoted crumbling,
to the insects’ chitinous armor
in its impatient and eternal defense,
and to the sea’s timeless surge,
its infinite and eversame repetition—
is indeed a thing one must and can do;
but it is impossible to bear that I,
on this whole island I, the human,
am the most fearsome of all.
(Translation: Hajdu Petra)
LEAVES AND SPORES
Weiner Sennyey Tibor: On the Pages of Leaves
You know, you ought to take your time
reading the leaves. Not the pages
that you write on, nor the ones
that others may send you.
The green pages that grow
on trees and on the stems of flowers,
those are the ones to study;
until, in time, you no longer
just marvel at them,
but find yourself fluent
in the script of his message.
(Translation: Hajdu Petra)
Weiner Sennyey Tibor: Song of the Mushroom
By the animals
unclaimed as kin.
By the plants
disowned as kind.
I tip my cap!
Greetings, skewed verdict,
and narrow mind:
by the wind my spores are sown.
(Translation: Hajdu Petra)
MOONLIGHT
Weiner Sennyey Tibor: The Night (excerpt)
The night pulls a green veil over her face;
she drenches her blue eyes in you,
the aperture to the light-sensitive Moon
paints your dreams in reverse—
an infinite Camera Obscura,
with a hidden smile for a tripod.
The lens blinks, enamored…
(Translation: Hajdu Petra)
BLUE SPHERE
Weiner Sennyey Tibor: Blue Sphere (excerpt)
I walk the streets with a blue sphere.
Blue Sphere: it is no easy task
to find a grip on you! Oh, aren’t you beautiful,
Blue Sphere, I love this vast, total
blueness; this piercing gaze—if indeed
blue spheres have a gaze at all,
or any sphere, for that matter—
but you must know just how splendid you are, Blue Sphere!
loveliest sphere of all spheres!
(Translation: Hajdu Petra)
RAY OF LIGHT
Weiner Sennyey Tibor: Footpath into the Night
How round the Sun is today,
the light, how loud a song.
How happy I am on this day.
How round the Sun is today.
Every Whole is built anew.
Every flame flares to the Sky.
Every love clicks into place.
Every Whole is built anew.
A river of beauty runs with me.
In its wake, a ghost-babble drifts.
Barely silence, nor yet noise
A river of beauty runs with me.
(Translation: Hajdu Petra)
DEEP IN THE FOREST
Weiner Sennyey Tibor: Song of the Trees
When the trees knot themselves in tight,
and hearing and sight are no more,
only the gold-blade grasses’ tremor;
when the winter sunbeam
freezes forever into the frame,
and there is no more life or death:
the rings snap open, shimmering,
the trunk begins a calm pulsation,
the tree departs its bark
and sings until the spring.
(Translation: Hajdu Petra)
WATER THAT CONNECTS
Weiner Sennyey Tibor: About unity
Mind is a stream.
Spirit is a cascade.
Soul is a lake.
There is but one possible way
Of harmonising the currents of
Mind, spirit and soul:
In uniting them
In clouds,
Rain
And the sea.
(Translation: Balogi Virág)
PLAIN SOUNDS
Weiner Sennyey Tibor: The Language of Birds
There is nothing but the soaring flock of birds.
There is only the silk thread between the birds.
There are neither birds nor sky,
Nor flapping, nor observer.,
But only this thread,
This invisible, visible string,
Which plucks, and while plucking, vibrates.
And while vibrating, produces sounds,
And the succession of these sounds begets music.
Oh, music! The immobility
of simultaneous motion, in music.
This music, on this string,
Is the only thing that exists,
That is,
that lives.
(Translation: Doktor Virág)