By the Danube
For Attila Jozef and Gabor G. Gyukics
Meditation by the statue of Attila Jozef
on the banks of the Danube
at the northern end of Budapest’s corso,
no identifying signs around because no need,
everyone recognizes the mustachioed poet
sitting on humble wooden steps,
leaned over, hands dangling over knees,
intensely surveying the passing flow,
his cloak tossed off beside him,
statue flaking and cracked,
this is how he appeared when he wrote “By the Danube,”
before he dove under the train,
this is how he watched the orange peel float by,
where he saw past, present, and future
in the waves, where all Hungarians,
all humanity going back to the primordial cell
spoke through him, where he became
the Universal One,
& told everyone
to get it together—
“By the Danube”
Gabor and I, his translators,
sit at his feet—
the Danube flows by timelessly
Since taking the oath of poetry, Michael Castro has kept brilliant wordfatih and good companyEliot, Baraka, Basho, Ginsberg, Black Elk, jazz, spokenwordworld—not bad for a poetic souljourner occupying formidable ritual ground: Ancient, American, Multicultural. A confluence of drums, cantors, trees, griots, cellos, shamans, koras, exlophones & shakers, this bardic scatman’s conch/us/nest offers high yields of love; beams in on abuses of art, humankind, & planet—& dreams us toward painful clarifications.
Eugene B. Redmond, Eye in the Ceiling, Arkansippi MemWars
Terrifically joyous book. Lovely & deeply one of a kind. Deeply engrained spirit w/in wide branches and flowerings.
David Meltzer, Selected Poems, Tens