IV.

I fell beside him and his corpse turned over, tight already as a snapping string. Shot in the neck. "And that's how you'll end too," I whisper to myself; "lie still; no moving. Now patience flowers in death." Then I could hear "Der springt noch auf," above, and very near. Blood mixed with mud was drying on my ear.

translated from the Hungarian by Zsuzsanna Ozsváth and Frederick Turner

Note: When the Hungarian Jewish poet Miklós Radnóti's body was exhumed from a mass grave after World War II, a bundle of his poems was found in his coat pocket, including his final poem "Postcard IV" shown above.