And even if my lips would get torn, in season of this ferocious March, being excit’d within by excit’d trees and being drunk with martial March salted and blood- -flavoured wind we have to drink now, there beneath the cloud, in current of the horrendous mill: and even if my lips would get torn, if it gets drown’d in blood with the song and while I do not hear through thunder of the great Mill, I could feel only through the taste of pain the taste of my song, and even then - the blood ’s so much! - let burst out the sanguineous song! My God! Is it this time to exalt heroes! is it the time to sing of victories of blind giants, to sing of machines, of glowing throats of guns compressed to cool for ferocious work: albeit my song is not a triumphal song and I don’t respect the caterpillars of trampling victory or infernal mill of tyranny: ’cause hundred winds of hiding life, stirr of blood of March do not permit to sing of death by machines, to sing of mills; rather to sing of love and man and lives, of unclotted slippy blood: and even if my lips would get torn to rags in this blood-flavour’d, salty wind we’ve to drink there beneath the cloud, in current of the horrendous Mill, that crushes the thrones and breaking down the secular limitations, nations, shatters the ore-made curb and steel-strong faiths of the past times, crushes the frame with soul and while grinding to bloody tatters of twofold death, spits in virgin Moon’s face, discredits one generation only by one wheel-round: and yet I do not sing of the machine in March, when in the air and through the dynamism of wind one feels the moist and wetted flavour of blood of ours, of the drink of dear Hungarian blood: and when I have drunk this saliferous air my mouth got abraded and words now cause pain to this mouth: but even if lips of mine would get torn, Magyar song in the season of March, the bloody song confronts the wind! I do not sing of the triumpher, the folk-machine, the blind hero, each step of whom designat’s the death, whose severe glance stiffens all the words, whose hand-press is subjection, but sing of who will be, whoever, who will utter or declare first the word, who will be the first, who will loudly say, who will cry and will be brave, brave, the magic word, the breath-giving word for millions, the man-redeeming, hope-providing and reinforcing, nation-saving and gate-opening liberating dearest word, that enough! it’s enough! it’s enough! that be peace! be peace! be peace! let be peace! Let it end at last! Who sleeps, let him be asleep, who lives, now let him live, the poor hero let have rest, the poor folk let have hope. Let all the bells ring and ring, let sound hallelujjah! when follows sunsequent March let’s effloresce again! part of us be up for work, others for interment, give the Lord us wine and corn, wine to forget this dread! Oh, peace! let be peace! be the peace, let be! Let it end at last! Who is dead, will now forgive, a-high tent of sky shines, Brethren, if we would survive, revert never our eyes! Who is guilty, do not ask, let plant rather flower, let’s love and grasp without mask this world with full power: part of us be up for work, others for interment, give the Lord us wine and corn, wine to forget this dread! Nyugat, 1916, No.7 Translation by Ottó Tomschey