Éva Berniczky

In the Light
of the Waning Moon

...

That morning, though, someone did spot an apparition among the bare and the evergreen bushes.

“Would you look at that!” he did not say or whisper so much as breathe into the cold air. Then, still not raising his voice, kept softly breathing out, “Just look at that, there! Would you look at that!”

No one heard what he was mumbling; that was not the reason why those who overtook him were lining up, but it was because they were terrified that someone in front had come to a standstill at a place where it was imperative to move on, where previously not one of them would have stopped. It was not the mumbling that they were responding to, they did not even hear what he was saying, they just followed the head movement in the direction that the earlier-comer was staring. Like him, they did not move but, if only out of sheer force of habit, nor did they venture into immediate proximity to the wall. From that distance, they could largely leave it up to their imagination; that dictated what they labelled as having happened, what they did and what they did not believe. The minutes passed; a growing number of them turned towards the wall. It mattered little, in point of fact, which of them discovered it, and at precisely what time, the spectacle was in itself at once the marker of both time and place, with those concerned also continuing to live their momentary reality in the spectacle. Their nature did not prevent them in the slightest from gazing with enjoyment at what was horrifying them. They did not snatch their heads away; from a safe distance perhaps, but they kept their eyes glued on a thing that, in the presence of others, they would have been embarrassed to be uninhibitedly engrossed in. As it grew light their situation worsened further, with ever more of them being able to make out something.

Balla D. Károly VÁLTÓNÁL Ha szállni kezd a válladra a hó, ne kérdezd, szükség mért is van a télre. Csak hasson át a hűs fehérek fénye – és álmot láss, ha szól az altató. És ébredj fel, ha arcod csípi jég, felelj rá bölcsen égi jóslatokra. Csitítsd a lelked, túlontúl ha forrna – és álmot láss, ha látni hagynak még.   És megszüless, ha erre van igény, és tégy csodát, hogy ámuljanak népek. Fogadj magadba bűnt és minden vétket – és álmot láss, ha megszűnik a fény.          Tiéd lehet az éjek nagykabátja,          míg álmodban a tél az évet váltja.

Ezúton köszönöm meg mindazok figyelmességét, akik az elmúlt napokban ünnepi jókívánságaikkal megkerestek, egyben én is a lehető legjobbakan kívánom  mindenkinek ez alkalomból írt angol szonettemmel. (Fotó: Balla Csönge)