Poets Against War continues the tradition of socially engaged poetry by creating venues for poetry as a voice against war, tyranny and oppression.
Ilona Martonfi
66 years old
Ilona Martonfi Poet, Creative writing teacher, editor. Founder/producer/host of The Yellow Door and Visuall Arts Centre Readings.
The Air Raid
The Air Raid
Red candle in a bomb shelter lit by my Mama. I sit beside grandmother Kisanyuka, and my big sister. Erna goes to playschool across the street with the nuns.
Last night, the moon was shining on my bed: a round yellow ball. The sirens didn’t call us. Now I hear a big noise, but I watch the red candle.
Mama says: “The kindergarten had a direct hit.”
Budapest, 1944
Gipshand
Gipshand
“She lost her right hand in a threshing machine. A farm accident,” they say. A round, white gypsum hand sticks out of a coat sleeve. “Open the gate for me, please,” she says. I lift the iron latch.
War refugees from Budapest: father and mother, three young daughters, grandmother Kisanyuka.
A farmer in Schillerswiesen gives us one room at the back of his house: a common room equipped with a wood stove for cooking, a table, and a few single beds.
Deep in the Bavarian Forest: a large blue dragonfly. Dandelions. Wild violets. Raspberry bushes. Blueberries.
Rooted in a treeless clearing: white wooden cross for a soldier.
The Shape Of The Street
The Shape Of The Street
Splinters of snow-glass lay on the grass red poppies grew in bomb craters
in the noise in the house
father killed our dog, Beno, with a sledgehammer he put a potato bag over him and jammed him into a vise Beno had bitten two people our grandmother, also
Neutraubling, Germany 1951
Boy From Burgweinting
Boy from Burgweinting
Plain rubble lay everywhere on the old airfield strip. The day lay on the ground listening to the silence of purple crabapples, wheat fields, bomb craters, and scarlet poppies, blue cornflowers.
We found this small corpse in the water. We fished him out.The boy drowned in the pond, Ascension Sunday. On the grass he lay: his body covered with a red wool blanket.
Germany, 1950
My Summer Boots
My Summer Boots
The best way to make the visit is walking: it was June, on a sunny summer day, Mama took me to the big city.
Roman, medieval Regensburg. The old town, all red-brick houses with steep roofs of slate or tile. Streets, paved with cobblestone. We crossed the stone bridge. Mama was carrying a smoked herring wrapped in old newspaper. “Take a bite. It’s good!” I spat the herring tail: “I don’t like fish! Don’t like the smell.”
Dressed in a red jumper. Short-sleeved white blouse. Ribbed knee socks. Brown ankle boots. Pigtailed, a girl of six.
“We are Magyar refugees,” I told my teacher Fraeulein Henrietta Nennstihl. 1948. The Schwabelweiss school, one kilometre distant. Bavarian Forest limestone mountains. Grey-brown waters of the Danube River that flows past the farm village. In first grade, I had head lice. Mother combed my hair. Crushed the lice with her nails.
American soldiers drove up to our school in Jeeps. Ladled delicious hot soup from tall aluminium milk cans. Children stood in line and held up a tin cup. Porridge with plump raisins was my favourite.
My teacher gave me stars for good work. “No chattering!”she said. She caught me and called me up front. “Put your hand out, Ilonka!” She slapped my palm with a wood ruler, twice. I kicked her in the shin with my boot.
After class I stayed at my desk. My teacher and I were alone in the empty classroom. She called me up front to her desk: “What a pretty flowered dress. Are those new boots you are wearing?” I liked her then and I was sorry I kicked her.
December fifth children leave shoes outside their rooms to be filled by Saint Nicholas. I wanted chocolates. Lebkuchen. Gingerbread, walnuts, and apples. “Saint Nicholas brings presents for those children who behaved. And nothing for those who haven’t!” father said. I found willow branches in my boots.
Political Freedom
Political Freedom
Where is your rifle, soldier? This moat. This field. Open wheat lands that roll away. Cornflowers. Orange-red poppies. Five soldiers at the Austro-Hungarian border crossing, Hedyeshalom. Tall meadow grass of my homeland. Dandelions. Buttercups. In a robin’s nest, blue eggs. Summer 1989, border troops dismantle the 350-kilometre Iron Curtain electronic signal system. Cut the barbed-wire fence with shears. Protect their hands with leather gloves.
THE SIEGE
THE SIEGE
On the eve of Christmas 1944, carols and organ music play on the radio,
mother and I ride a yellow tram through snow: families loaded down with presents.
A Russian tank blocks the doors of the cinema,
sound of rifle and machine-gun fire. Street fighting in Budapest has already begun.
Acacia-lined Liszt Ferenc utca 14: we live in Ujpest, a suburb of the capital. Four-story, red sandstone and marble.
Root vegetables are stored in the cellar. We have a well for drinking water.
On the eve of Christmas,
the Bolshevik siege-ring closes around the city: defended by Waffen-SS and Magyar troops.
Residents build barricades.
Mother and I ride the tram:
snow over slate mansard roofs. Sash windows with wooden shutters.
Air raids every night.
I hug my grey stuffed dog,
on the eve of Christmas, wrapped in foil and tied with bows: walnuts, gingerbread. Roasted chestnuts. Balsam fir lit with red candles.
KALKBERGE (CHALK MOUNTAINS)
AUSLÄNDER
To be true of my six-year-old life: Donaustauf, by the Danube River, 1948. “Ausländer!” older girls pull my pigtails. Push me on a gravel road.
I start first grade in Schwabelweiss: Ribbed knee socks. Leather ankle boots. Attend mass in the onion domed village church. Walled cemetery shaded by Kastanien.
“Don’t play near the river!” Father sees me come into the house, sees the wet hemline of my blue cotton dress: He beats my bum with a rubber baton, or gummy bot.
Second grade school photograph: Fräulein Henrietta Nennstihl, my teacher. To be true of my seven-year-old life.
Wild blueberries in the Bavarian Woods. Red raspberries and yellow sunshine, white wooden cross for a soldier. To be true of my four-year-old life.
Black and white Budapest newsreel film: Air raid shelter, planes dropping bombs. To be true of my two-year-old life.
“Ausländer!” older girls pull my pigtails. Push me on a gravel road.
Father trades his three horses and wagon for a green military Opel truck. Moves us to the old airport, Neutraubling: Osier reed in bomb craters.
And there grow Kornblumen.
KALKBERGE (CHALK MOUNTAINS)
KALKBERGE (CHALK MOUNTAINS)
In the old Stube, low-ceilinged parlour: Hans Brenner’s open coffin. Pfennig coins placed on the eyes.
Schoolchildren attend the wake during recess,
I chat with my friend Ingrid, eating Schwarzbrot spread with homemade raspberry jam. Aproned, blue cotton dress, Pigtailed Magyar girl of eleven.
Old military airport Neutraubling: After the war, refugees settled in the ruins. Bavarian chalk mountains.
The funeral proceeding to Walhallastrasse. Pallbearers carry the coffin to the Barbing Cemetery, a farm village two kilometres distance.
A short, thin woman in black crêpe, his widow follows on foot: She doesn’t bring a bouquet of wildflowers. Purple iris. Marguerite.
“He died from a bleeding ulcer.” :a month ago,
the kitchen garden, tall poplar,
listening to a loud quarrel:
chiselled out of karst, limestone hills, gorges, and caves.
In our childhood, we ride down here on our bicycles,
Danube River sand dunes, pungent wild sorrel and bulrush.
Reed warbler song.
JACOB’S FATHER
JACOB’S FATHER
Plum-coloured velvet curtains.
Soot over slate mansard roofs. Budapest newsreel film: 1945.
Soviet soldiers toss phosphorous bombs. Glowing orange and blue in darkness.
Facing the river, my house:
Chestnut trees line the street. Wooden fence, barbed wire ghetto.
The day we opened the windows looking out on the street:
Jacob’s father
was marched to the river and shot into the icy waters.
