My God, I
Te úristen, én
I took a stroll today it was cold no rain though
and it crossed my mind that my god how many
but how many mistakes I’ve made
I kicked a small piece of rock to the road
from between two cars with the side of my foot
the wind blew trash I had to stand aside
so it wouldn’t blow right into my eyes
it’s all background noise, only the background chatter
of old trucks on old roads
later I had a long conversation with someone
in an Italian restaurant, I got phone calls
but I didn’t notice all of them
or I did but I let them ring
my coat got warmed up then it
got cooled down by the time I took it off
suddenly and all at once everything changed
once I was walking in a nice wild place where
everybody was shopping and weren’t talking about
how we need many jobs as many as we need
I say this all to myself since there isn’t anyone
with whom I would want to talk with about it
In a country where the almost constant obligation to confess held sway for a very long time—which often led to the absurd—the poem, on the contrary, is a means of truth that is all the more true because it does not shy away from exposing its limits.
—Florence Tomcé, French writer, journalist, musician
…every paragraph, every word, is aware of the sufferings of its formation, but also knows there is pathos in this suffereing, even a certain half involuntary coming air or self-irony attached to it, just as to the fate that was endured.
—Peter Por, French-Hungarian Literary Scholar