According to this poem, humanity and memory are older than our Earth. The primal star, Mahruh, whence we originate, was a spherical and empty bubble, and bore seas, plains, and mountains a thousand times greater than the ones we know. And more kinds of plants and animals, and many more people. It exploded millions of years ago. One of its discharged slivers is the Earth.

The Sun and its train would have fit several times in its inner space, but they did not exist then. Three seething heavenly bodies revolved around it, heating it and lighting it as now the Sun does the Earth: yellow Udmirtu, white Khaureu, and red Bingu; and nine many-colored comets coiled with them. Mahruh rocked its dwarves and giants in a complex rhythm of alternating light-darkness. Mahruh means “the place beneath the steps of the Ancients,” or “the fruit garden of the gods.”

Foreign words flicker among the words of the song like dragons in the mud. They are, for the most part, names of the regions of that time: continents which, even if we measured them with the greatest of our earthly standards, would be like tree-trunks measured with inchworms; mountains so large their bases would squash the Earth’s curve and whose peaks would sweep away the Moon; cataracts and rivers so great the Moon would float away on them.

In the last age of Mahruh, at the beginning of the flood and flood of fire, a bard sings among limitless war, at the time of the earthquake. He lists and laments a hundred dying lands. The poet calls himself Rou Erou, that is, Purple Flame. He lived in the age of the decline, and is a much less noteworthy artist than the poets of the golden age. But his song, almost at the moment of the fall, illuminates the landscape of Mahruh like a lightning bolt, and we see in summary, even if only as a sketch, what sort of life there was.

The original title of the song was “Kana vuanh athetan jargelih” – “A Dirge Drum for a Hundred Withering Worlds in the City of Jargeh.”

1.

Three lances of stone in your chest, darkening Kartiabh-todarh!

A round-table High Court of Justice raises its finger and sells you.

Above weeps the Ancestors’ fortress, its thresholds slippery with tears.

Far in the depths of your rich mines the gold is frightened to slag.

2.

Fair Ogarinn, haughty peacock! Your feather-crested dead kings sweat,

Water froths on their corpses, like streams in your snowy mountains.

Your quick-trotting little mules stand by the roadside, groaning.

Have Szippü and Szuarat fallen? Or is it the Ghatemu’s thunder?

3.

Ligügh-todarh, blood’s stubble field, the Great Mother’s pasture of milk and grass,

Where the fragrance of dawn courses among the fallen helmet crests,

Where heavy swords sink slowly into the deep, plump earth,

Where now are your luxuriant beds? Where are your scattered brides?

4.

From her many cities Lulobh gazes at the silver-ribbed ocean.

The marble towers’ rooftop spheres stare up at the heavens.

They lay their stonework laces out in shining tides of distance.

The corbels loosen and warp, a heavy section falls.

5.

Tirtakh and Tungnagh’s green dragon: footstool of riverside light,

On each side prickly burburh trees puff up and fire their fruit.

They hover in the hot, red wind like bearded human heads.

Poison fills its carcass, cool slime, never to grow hot.

6.

Between the cracks in the dewy clouds, Gherke, your form ducks down.

Hiding in your chalky vale, I dreamed this on a carpet:

Swinging grapes before his face stood your faithful shepherd,

But they could not defend him. The mountain peak sailed off in fire.

7.

Up on God’s Wall, Höröargh, I see your blood-fogged eyes;

Chiming, the ice heap snaps from the mountain, like a crystal drinking glass,

And the holy terror of crevices rushes to the mountain’s base.

The Godwall sheds its skin! It jerks naked like a frog.

8.

Nine deserts and nine mountain ranges listen to Vevenügh’s weeping.

Her tears fall in enormous drops into the sacred Sea of Swans.

Time-pieces shine from her nine long arms and ankles,

Her wounded heart: a translucent bluebell hanging from the sky.

11.

 Zölölugh’s tigress bellows in the heart of the crimson forests.

At her paws, the five blue seas are full of milt and roes.

In the shade of her blue-gold breast, hidden valleys, bearing joy.

She tramples the nest, her cub lost, she groans at her swollen dugs.

13.

Up to your knees in the mirroring sea, Navininügh, fickle girl,

Aching in your trampled body, you watch the distance ceaselessly.

Awaiting a rescuing sail? Or do balms grow in the oceans?

Run back alone to your cave. A bad night follows a bad day.

15.

Ügholul, bare parapet, the stone above the seawide stream,

The bones of thirty million men overlay your bitter valley,

And on them file, meandering, the ants, in order, following,

A single serpent from Hogh’s shore all the way to Gingru.

17.

Bundled in your mild breezes, sea salted Zalh-mirürh,

Your nets’ hemp rots, your jetties shell-clogged,

Gouts crawl to your knees, the wind mistakes its season,

Your fisher-nation flees, reaches land, lives in caves.

18.

Gentle Feillü, I weep for you. I hear your loving voices.

Lowland, mountain, seashore and sea, all give your gems to others now.

You sleep in shackles, stunned. I see you, my love, from afar.

On Dzsontunn and Shikurej’s fortress a squabbling, fat, scabby lip bitches.

19.

Wine’s chalice, shrill Zeirenre, high up on your candent cliffs

The Scaly Bird sings with the light of heaven’s pure white voice.

The breeze casts off its slippers, she dances barefoot, and grins,

The stormcloud dozes off … home of rapture, now where are you?

21.

I pity you, proud Zalh-alka, that your amethyst throat was crushed.

You felt first of all us the funnel of the hurricane.

You begged for help from forty kings who would not understand.

Now they learn to count the steps of fate on unsown lands.

23.

On Lallamisshi’s spindly back, on oily, membrane-rivers,

For twenty years, with ash-decked wings the Bird of Devastation perches –

Shooting dice with the empty wind, heeding Nothing’s counsel –

He tosses bleached dry bones against the fence of wretchedness.

24.

I know you, noble Jormun, I travelled through your crocus field,

Long ago, in my torch years, I dropped my scabbard in a brook.

While I was groping in the mud, a frog said: “forget it, forget it.”

Perhaps announcing then that this would be our fate.

25.

I won’t bother with you, Ajghüo, you wouldn’t listen anyway,

Neither in the House of Beards, or under the Emerald Eagle’s Beak.

I know why those who spring from your garden deny it until they die.

A lemon is sour where it grows, in its home, no one needs it.

27.

Cliff-pacing mammoth, Mun-togh, like four pillars on the march,

Singed and scorched up from the meadows, it rises to its ridges;

Volcanoes cleanse their breasts, unbutton their basalt blouses,

The sky is sown with ashes, the forest ploughed with fire.

31.

Buranka’s signal-buoys, the treasuries of great cities,

A line of full, shining sails upon the sea’s blue fish scales,

Sluggish, bellying barks, filled with fruit, lag

Like pregnant women on the canal; but they are not for us.

34.

Arölarh’s pied pomp, arches, garlands, angles,

Balconies leaning on each other, waves of enamel shingles,

And tulip calices so large a horseman could ride through them,

Now with the shingles scraped off, no trace of a fine carpet.

37.

Stormy, barren Jisztünh, where a lion-colored heaven’s arc

Collapses on the rusty distance, and red winds knead red hills,

The beaten army’s landskiffs skip above the sea of sand,

They dissolve among the miles, they will not be back.

38.

Five armies’ bones lost in your desert, silicone Pöszmöszüj,

You watch the hot air’s images, what’s rising from the south?

Have Szigutsz and Vobh raised their flags, along with Ninkjatanh,

Or is sullen Kmala, like a thundering mountain, coming on?

44.

I ask you, traitor Norho, do you get more of what you own?

They float your forests down their rivers, they prune your garden boughs,

As if your foul hound steps could lord it over your trampled fields,

Just like the others, a slave plough, mourning and plunder are your end.

48.

Ripe with orchards, ripe Szumarbebh, vermilion hills and purple meadows,

In the sky, a leafsmoke gray, a violet shade on the waters’ pearl,

In its gateless, rattail garden, the five-petal print of an infant’s foot,

Down in the mouldering tubs of must, the fragrance of peaceful vintages.

60.

The corner of three different worlds, Oröhullu, jasper domed,

Where steaming Vah stream’s basin three times redirects itself,

Where the strong star, Udmirtu, turns and returns on its arch:

Mount of Gods! You have no mouths to speak your hurt.

77.

Walls to the sky, face to face, sit Tinkimanda and Tirüdaid,

Here mirages let me see The Gnarled Sidekick go by.

It seemed to be a little puddle where he let his cart dogs drink

From the Riakh, sea-wide stream, where even gulls can see no banks.

78.

The palm of Vuabshakani, Orhamdojuri’s cedar,

Under the brass-green cloud they watch for flashing thunder,

And grip deep in the cool ground, where the hidden land grumbles,

Rocked by heavy rolls, the never-seen canopy stumbles.

85.

Bronze wasps and ruby melons, Aleghi’s fingerlike lights,

What the Guard of the Blossom’s face believes, my cool heart sees –

Wind, bear the news: the purple sings in the furnace still,

One can feel its warmth, whatever other light may shine.

89.

Mighty Hehor, broken lance! Now where are your warriors?

Your castles that the music and the pearl-light filled like ocean shells,

Your crane-paced queens, and silver gauntlets, where are the hefty wines?

Now a dark mane flaps atop your graceful, jewel-packed sloops.

94.

World’s navel, Nuamtompank, where up and down are both the same,

Above my head hang seas and mountains, in canyons’ depth the skies,

Cities hang askew, in the air a stone that will not fall,

Now you are veiled, even you, by tyrants with locust beaks.

97.

Crouching in Donza’s dust, the Wise Man, the Saint, roasts carrots.

He says: “The cyclone has no face, just arms and legs, it’s the law.”

He says: “Whenever fate relaxes, it tightens up as well.”

He says: “You built a great house, don’t cry when the draft expels you.”

99.

North and south and every direction cracks, bones cry out,

The voices of the World’s Eight Guards, who shouted “order everywhere!”

Boil in their throats, and crack on heaven’s arch;

A third time they try to shout, they tremble: “…everywhere!”

100.

Mogh’s peak in Minzat wobbles; the axis of the earth, space and sky,

And the Lord on the edge of a moment, pales at the peak of His laws,

But now he rocks in the arms that embrace him on every side,

The one and the many crystal chimes of high and constant time.

101.

So the masterless wail, the song of collapsing mountains,

The pain of the drowning pastures, the chant of earthquake and wildfire;

Trapped in Jargeh-by-Riakh, I do penance for faith in war,

I turn your faces to the breaths of a hundred fallen worlds.

(Translated from the Hungarian by I.C.-R.)