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| "A madjar nyelv már vesz el. Mi örögek vadjunk még, beszélünk madjarul, de az éfijúság, ezek a tinerek, ezek nem. A zién lejányom még beszél, de ja ziszkólába sak oláhul tanult, nem madjarul. De tud madjarul jól. Az onkáim isz tudnak madjarul, de nem ura fórdjiccák vissza." —Fotó: Ádám Gyula |
—from a photo by Gyula Ádám
A Csángó Magyar woman sits
in a windowed alcove stained
the color of a forgotten summer sky.
Her mind is lost in the crenulated folds
of memory and the wars, and those who left,
but her hands still know the path
to the freshly baked cornbread
moist and warm from the kemence.
Crumbs cling to the lip of the knife like a lover.
The cat speaks and weaves an intricate knot
between the staves of a 3-legged stool
that was once a wagon wheel
straddling the ruts on a dirt road,
now planted in the barren clay floor,
as the photographer records
the death rattle of an old way of life
threatened by time and culture.
She is dressed in maroon and black.
At her age, mourning is a permanent state of being.
She wears new running shoes,
the only concession to this age.
But even Nikes will not carry her to victory.
Her sad eyes that witnessed the atrocities
of war and the devastation of her culture,
can no longer see the lacy intricacies of light
and shadow playing on the oblique walls,
billowing like stormclouds on the horizon.
The limed stucco ceiling, stained
a robin's-egg-blue to ward off the evil eye,
sloughed off in the shape of a sacred heart
to reveal the the ribs of old wood and reed.
Clouded eyes that witnessed myriad winters,
are the secret color of bauchy ice.
She can no longer see the small stitches
her skilled fingers once embroidered
on the fine tapestries covering the wall,
enscribed in a fractal language of flower & field.
The meaning of the ancient patterns—
a mother tongue translated in gutteral runes
drawn in crimson and woad, a dying language
forgotten by the modern world,
only whispered in the funereal corners
of the past.
7/18/12
