S’NDOR WE’RES: Antithin
At last it has leaked out – thin men are the cause of everything.
They wait in ambush on street corners and if an old woman comes by
they don’t even greet her. They are more concerned with exchanging their
straw hats for lottery tickets, and with naturalising crocodiles in
the waters of Europe, so that even there there should be no safety.
They always begin their fishy deals in their beds at dawn, and
afterwards go to the street. Some work in offices, others ostensibly
are waiters or locksmiths – they all disguise themselves but their
true trade is thinness. At last it has leaked out – thin men are, etc.
(This poem, translated by Richard Lourie, can be found in Leopard V: An
Island of Sound – Hungarian Poetry and Fiction before and beyond the Iron
Curtain. It is included here as The Brown Wedge’s contribution to the
Pumpkin Publog’s campaign to save the Ayingerbrau Fat Man. You can add your name to the petition here.)