Oscraps
Mortar - AnnaLift
The text is excerpted from the poem "Msz" ("Mortar"
by Hungarian poet Pter Zvada. The translator, Mark Baczoni, notes that Zvada lost his mother to depression, that "Msz" can mean either "limestone" or "you are going" and would also bring to the minds of most Hungarians a well-known folktale about a mason who must sacrifice his wife and mix her remains into mortar to solidify a castle he's building.
Translation:
Dad and I took your burned-up bones and your immolated blood and softly,
softly as a pagan mason sacrificing to his mother earth, mixed you into our
mortar to make it set; although you were there already.
Every brick we laid that day
had fallen down by morning.
Credits: Anna Aspnes, Dido Designs + images from the Wellcome Collection
by Hungarian poet Pter Zvada. The translator, Mark Baczoni, notes that Zvada lost his mother to depression, that "Msz" can mean either "limestone" or "you are going" and would also bring to the minds of most Hungarians a well-known folktale about a mason who must sacrifice his wife and mix her remains into mortar to solidify a castle he's building.Translation:
Dad and I took your burned-up bones and your immolated blood and softly,
softly as a pagan mason sacrificing to his mother earth, mixed you into our
mortar to make it set; although you were there already.
Every brick we laid that day
had fallen down by morning.
Credits: Anna Aspnes, Dido Designs + images from the Wellcome Collection