TRANSLATING FOR TOURISTS

Like pillars of salt
were those you left behind—
worth no second glance,
Your dollars for peace—
and hard currency
lives so empty, unmarked.

In this hell

"The Ministry of Tourism
and the people welcome
you, cousins; I am
your guide."
your footprints baked
into clay will vanish
again into the west.
Ourselves we will excavate.

At the crossroads:

This truly is the village
really that very house
where grandmother's Lot
cast himself out of the demon.
Let's go inside; surely
no one will mind.
great flocks blacken the sky,
settle during migrations: each bird
recalls the topography of place,
knows nothing of other creatures'
lives made here from beginning
to end here, only here

One photo, please.

It is Sunday; we should rest.
Lumber along, cousins,
into the past, back
to when dinosaurs
were already extinct,
Your fur-heavy beasts;
Worthless, lazy, pagan idolater
Your photos like sand—
time will uncover
where you have walked—
this is your future.
Fragments on your tongues

Already were lost.

These caverns hid resistance fighters,
our books and our works of art.
Wasn't it lovely,
around the corner, in the market
where our souls are in each trinket—
left behind in that place
Your firebombs baked them alive—
examine their entrails on the walls
Here every morning in season
the birds seem to chirp,
as they rise into the sky
disease in their droppings.

a woman, as I have heard, grim and gigantic,
was seen by certain persons and declared
these disasters insignificant in comparison
to what was destined to befall them.
Without teeth she bit the air around them
and accused them of atrocities.

No, not us. That was long ago, dear.
Twenty? Thirty Years?
Surely, not yet fifty.

© John Horváth Jr

Commentary:

After war, battlegrounds become tourist attractions with guides who see one world where tourists see another. It's Vietnam or Waterloo or Berlin and elsewhere. Macabre tourism also occurs among second-generation immigrants who return to the "homeland" of their fathers and mothers. The two columns of the poem represent contrasting views between rich and poor, conqueror and conquered, native and foreigner, descendants and ancestors, young and old — one column very straight and proper and the other loose and unaligned. It is also about the warrior at war and at peace. Every war is tourism taken to extreme. In tourism, we ask "where can I get a Coca-Cola?" In war we say "My God, these heathens don't have Coca-Cola!"

John Horváth Jr
Bonfire contributor