Hungarian Songs
by Theodora Goss

I want to tell a story about the hills
that Hungarians call mountains
known as the Mátra, which is a mountain range
or a ridge of hills, depending on where you come from,
and a particular hill (or mountain) from which you can see
forever, or at least as far as the next hillside.
On it grow wildflowers, and among the wildflowers
grow butterflies, some orange with brown spots,
some white with orange spots, some green,
and grasshoppers. If you sit there quietly,
you can hear the birds in the forest,
and the wind in the leaves, and the crickets,
all singing to you, each singing their distinctive
songs, which are as old as the hills
(or mountains) and untranslatable
from the original Hungarian.

(The image is an illustration of butterflies from a Hungarian book on natural history.)