Attila József: Maybe I’ll disappear in a sudden

Maybe I’ll disappear in a sudden
like a wild trail in the woods.
I turned everything to sullen
on which I could make reports.

My budding childish body
was dried out on corrosive smoke.
Grief makes my mind foggy
if I’d find out what my results spoke.

The teeth dugged in me early
of the desire that had found a stranger.
Now, a vibrating remorse is coming lately:
I could have waited ten years more over.

Not even by defiance, I ever understood
the meaning of the motherly words.
Then, I became an orphan, a no-good
and laughed at my instructors.

My youth, this green wilderness,
I believed it were free and eternal
and now I’m listening in tears
the dry branches as they rattle.

Benyamin Bensalah

13.03.2021

Translated from the Hungarian poem of Attila József, “Talán eltűnök hirtelen” (1937).