Dancing Embers

The first comprehensive volume, in English, of the work of Hungarian poet Sándor Kányádi, the country's nominee for the Nobel Prize, sampling many facets of his oeuvre. SMOKE Smoke has been the sign of human settlement ever since Prometheus' defiant act, ever since people settled down to roasting, torching, scorching and cremating, ever since human history began its smoldering. The pale blue smoke of campfires and the black smoke of plunder, burning stakes, and crematoria; they both have stained the sun and its starry vault in this accustomed homey hue. Puffing on a cigarette I'm sitting high up on a hill, watching limpid supper smoke weave its way from the valley across the reclining sunrays; but it's the sickening fume of burning brains that tickles my memory for taste and smell. Could they be burning books somewhere?