Zeke László
Poems in the Language of the Operational Staff: “For My Birthday”
Translated from the Hungarian by Jason Vincz
Lt. Col. József Attila reports:
The subject had recently celebrated his 32nd birthday,
on which occasion he became the beneficiary of a small
contract assigning the intellectual property rights
to a poem, for which he took full responsibility.
On that same occasion, he complained of his
dissatisfaction with his career thus far, alleging
that his monthly income did not meet
the minimum standard for a college graduate,
which he attributed to the prevailing
political conditions in Hungary.
He suggested the possibility that he might have been able
to advance his teaching career had he not been forced
to take a low-paying literary editorial position, which
he blamed on his having been fired by—and having
had his legal status as a student revoked by—
the dean of the university
headquartered in Szeged.
He complained that his dismissal had taken effect immediately,
and was thus a contract violation, alleging that the accused,
Dean Horger Antal, “behaved strangely” and knowingly
committed a crime in terminating the poet’s legal status
as a student over his poem which begins, “I am not in
the possession of a father.” The subject also conveyed
the mistaken assumption that his behavior might have
absolved the Hungarian state of possible legal liability.
The minutes which recorded the incident contain a verbatim
citation of the honorable dean’s words. “As long as I have
the independence necessary for the effective exercise of my
oversight capabilities, I can guarantee that you will not
be able to find placement at any educational institution
anywhere in the global territories north of the Equator,”
he said, and while saying so (according to the complainant
poet’s version of events), he displayed
a joyful facial expression.
The poet alluded to the possibility that the accused, Horger
Antal—in taking pleasure in the poet’s having been forced
to forgo a scrupulous, scholastically systematic investigation
of the orthographic conventions of the Hungarian language—
may have been filled with joy in vain, and that this joy might
have been a short-lived, trivial affair. He also mentioned
the prospect of not giving up on his pedagogical activities,
in which instructional vocation he still hopes to advance
by taking on quite a large number of private students,
in practice the entirety of the Hungarian populace,
and teaching them in accordance with the requirements
of the Graduate College of Arts and Sciences.