"Under a Blue Sky"

High in the wind and sun was my dwelling-place,
motherland, now you chain in the valley of
shadow your broken son; no comfort
now are the heavenly games of evening.

Over the cliffs the skyscape is shining; I
dwelling in the depths, and stones are my company,
speechless; should I then be as they are?
Why do you write? Is it death? Who asks you?—

Asks of your life a reckoning, asks of this
fragment of poem how it remains but a
fragment? Know this: unmourned, unburied,
I shall lie graveless, no vale shall rock me.

Winds shall disperse my leavings; but listen, the
cliff shall re-echo – today, or tomorrow – the
song I am singing; boys and girls are
growing up now who will hear its meaning.

—Miklós Radnóti, “In a Troubled Hour”
January 10, 1939