60 for 60: Punctual Poem about Dusk

By Zachary Erickson

t’s now fall and October—which means that the ghoulish among us can at last revel in the twilight of the year. It’s quite a beautiful season and month: there’s a nobility and a grandeur to this time of the year. Before we settle into ghost mode, though, we ought to pay homage to the fading grandeur of summer. The thought of a summer evening might help us do so, and that thought might lead to excellent poetry.

The great Hungarian poet Miklós Radnóti (1909–1944) certainly had such a thought. The Journal’s Spring/Summer 1980 issue featured a 1934 poem of his: “Punctual Poem about Dusk.” The poem is a beautiful evocation of the shadows of the end of a summer day, a time to be celebrated, a scene of the resilience and relaxation of nature.

May the beauty of the current season inspire both outstanding poetry and a moment of stillness in our march through this new year.

Punctual Poem about Dusk
Miklós Radnóti
Translated by Emery George

It was exactly eight-o-nine;
fire was kindled under water,
riverbank willows turning fatter,
with shadows squeezing in between.

Evening arrives; the river Tisza
just laps along with the giant raft,
to lazy to swim it, fore or aft;
the one it watches, the hiding sun,

now lurks among tall meadow grass,
rests on the sloping pasturelands,
scatters in air, and all at once
darkness settles above the paths.

Faithfully two poppies protest;
you can still see them, they don’t mind,
yet here comes, punishing, the sky:
by bayonetted breeze it sends

word; and the darkness, flying wraith,
smiles at the flowers which only bend
and will not break, can scarce abandon
lightheartedly their crimson faith.

(So twilight ages, old as Gramps,
you can even call it evening;
blackly it sees the Tisza rolling,
its breath befogs the riverbanks.)