Selected Poems

Ondra Lysohorsky's Selected Poems is listed on Phillip Ward's A Lifetime's Reading: The World's 500 Greatest Books. Unfortunately, English translations of this delightful collection seem widely unavailable. It is out of print. I picked up a copy on e-Bay. Even after paying shipping, the book cost less than $10. Ondra Lysohorsky is the nom de plume assumed by Ervín Goj, a Czech poet who lived from 1905 - 1989.

Reading his poetry was like walking through history and hearing, through the words of a poet, a first-hand account of the reaction of the people who were living at the time. He lived in a time when the world was only 2-million years old, when science rather than saving humanity had shown how truly dangerous technology could be, when our world was consumed with wars.

Hands at work.
Hands at love.
Hands at death.

Hands playing a violin.
Hands on the trigger in the aircraft of Hiroshima.
Hands in prayer. (Hands)

He grew up in the Czech Republic where a statue of Jan Hus stands as a reminder to the failings of the Western church and a religious system. And he writes:

The dead philosophy student
testifies louder

than debates in the vortex of human pillar of fire
which will sweep through Prague

till the end of the history of this city steeped in fire
and blood
where John Huss has preached in vain

for over five centuries:
'He that will not serve truth, conscience and humanity

shall lose his power.' (Ballad of Jan Palach, Student and Heretic)

And my personal favorite:

When my hair was black,
all here below seemed ill-arranged.

When it became grey,
slowly my eyes opened.

Now when my hair is white,
I see eternity in every moment. (Ballad of Hair)

Simply delightful! I am glad the person who listed this on e-Bay didn't know that it was a rare, hard to find book that usually sells for more.