Extinction

by Geza Tatrallyay

Synopsis

Geza's poems confront our human ultimate concerns of Mother Earth, life, love, death, and the meaning of existence. There are the doomsday poems, an unmistakable wake-up call, if not already too late, and poems on the beauty of our cosmos along with the fleeting joys of love open to being husband, father, and grandfather. This book makes it clear where Geza is coming from, where he is going, why, and his wonderful, compact poems demonstrate what poetry is and ought to be.

Release date: April 6, 2019

Publisher: P.R.A. Publishing

Print pages: 102

Sample

Foreword

Nearly fifty years ago Geza Tatrallyay and I could have passed each other unwittingly in Harvard Yard but we did not meet until reading at a poetry recitation in Vermont last year. Immediately, I recognized similarities in our concerns pertaining to the perilous, irresponsible human condition, the fate of our planet, and for everything that lives upon it.

The carefully selected cover of Geza’s third volume of poetry, Extinction, and the author’s cogent introduction reveals its tripart con- tents: destroying our earth, extinction of all life, and, finally, poignant reflections on his own mortality. The wonder of this book, however, transcends the obvious gloom with the inclusion of poems detailing the incomparable beauty of our universe and the power of love to make human life a meaningful experience.

The “Witching Hour”, the book’s first poem, impresses me for two significant reasons. The major theme is stated without a single exces- sive word in three compact stanzas: “Is this the witching hour, the turning point,” in “...destroying our one earth”. Also, what a pleasure to read a poem with a strict form and fitting meter. The form of his poems is important to Tatrallyay and is only one reason why he is

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Foreword

so inclined to haiku, which requires saying much in a few words. In three lines and seventeen syllables as follows:

We keep polluting:
storms, floods and fires blight our earth – when will mankind learn?

Numerous dark images dominate this first part, “evening shad- ows,” “black hole,” “terrible night,” yet the poet reminds us of the beauty of the universe with such a line as “the royal sun’s brilliant arrival.” So why do we not cease our selfish lifestyle?

Part Two opens with the title poem, again admirably strict in blank verse with a telling alliteration of the letter “r” in the third line of the tercet:

I can picture the mighty mastodon,
the towering, ivoried, hairy beast
that ruled and roamed this primal earth

After a four-stanza declaration of “Extinction”, in the following poem, “Mosquito”, Geza shares a light-hearted moment by killing a mosquito which has bitten him but whose relatives spend the remain- der of the summer exacting their revenge. Geza Tatrallyay loves the greatest music, as do I, and Schubert, Mozart, Verdi, and Bach have their place in his poems and what an unforgettable image is his Cello’s Tears, the title of Geza’s first collection of poems. In this second part a favorite of mine is “Reluctant Weeder”. Shamed by his wife into weeding, Geza lists twenty-eight exotically named weeds, which in true Darwinian words ultimately will dominate as the survival of the fittest. Nevertheless, Part Two leaves no doubt that humans have made their one world into a very dangerous place.

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Foreword

Geza Tatrallyay contemplates his own demise in the third, final part making it clear in several poems that the love he and his wife, Marcia, share is what gives purpose and meaning to a human life which will end. His poem “Requiem” is a taut, ten lines of three sylla- bles each except for line ten which is an imposing, conclusive question mark. This powerful, little poem is for me a condensation of human ultimate concern. “When I die /will I hear/the Mozart/Requiem/or Verdi’s/Or simply/will it be/the silence/of nothing/?”

Geza’s poems do confront our human ultimate concerns of Mother Earth, life, love, death, and the meaning of existence. There are the doomsday poems, an unmistakable wake-up call, if not already too late, and poems on the beauty of our cosmos along with the fleeting joys of love open to being husband, father, and grandfather. This book makes it clear where Geza is coming from, where he is going, why, and his wonderful, compact poems demonstrate what poetry is and ought to be. What a pleasure to have found a like-minded friend mak- ing his way down the same road.

Peter Fox Smith

North Pomfret, Vermont January 2019

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Part I

The World

Many of the poems in this section examine the destructive relation- ship we have with the world around us although several simply revel in the magical beauty of our universe.

Witching Hour

Is this the witching hour, the turning point, when the simmering seas boil, spill across
the cauldron’s brim to flood this verdant earth: corpses of frogs and fish, seals and birds,
our detritus, plastics and rotting hulls
wash up with the silt to bury my feet.

Is this the witching hour, the turning point,
when wildfires spread, raging across the land and consume forests and fields, roads and towns, killing with burning heat and acrid smoke
all life they find in homes or barns or nests
or frantically fleeing the fated end.

Is this the witching hour, the turning point: we know damn well it is, but do nothing— we continue our hedonistic lives,
complicit in destroying our one earth.

3

Haiku: Calving Glaciers

glaciers calve, like cows:
but these children, too, all die, like we, who strew filth

4

Haiku: End of Day

evening shadows play: the splendor of the sunset, the chill of the night