Old Hungarian Women
by Theodora Goss

I see them sometimes, walking
along the street, pulling
wheeled shopping baskets behind them,
or standing in the doorways
of apartment houses, talking
to one another. They wear scarves
on their heads, or hats they have knitted
themselves. They wear sensible shoes.

I see them, the old women,
and I am convinced
they are witches, every one of them.
That they know (maybe they are
the only ones who know)
what’s going on — with the weather,
the war, the political situation.
They don’t interfere — they just watch,
knowing, having seen it all before,
having lived through a war already,
through assorted revolutions,
through socialism, capitalism, all the other
isms you can think of. They have striped cats
that lie blinking on their windowsills
behind lace curtains, and flower boxes
filled with red geraniums. They make jam
from plums and syrup from elderberries.
They have magic in the tips of their fingers,
which they embroider into pillows,
doilies. They make strudel
with dough folded out of thin, flaky air,
bread rolls like clouds, paprikás
for which angels sin and fall from heaven.
They can turn into crows, gray and black,
parading around the city parks,
holding conventions.

I myself am a little scared
of the old women. I am convinced
they can see into my soul. I am not at all
sure that I have been good or clever
or polite enough to avoid their curses —
or disapproving glances, which,
to be honest, might be even worse.

Maybe someday they will let me
join them — but I would have to become
a great deal wiser, practice
how to make jam, transform myself
into a crow, the magical art
of endurance.

(The image is Old Woman by Sándor Bihari.)