Poems of Peace: Özge Lena, "In a Nuclear Bunker in Budapest"

In a Nuclear Bunker in Budapest

It is again the hottest August

ever recorded. Like every single one

for the last three years, this time honey

moon. At the end of a rotten lemon

 

green corridor, a man stands in storm

grey overalls wearing a full-face

gas mask, his head made of three

circles—a snout-like plastic mouth

 

with a couple of blind glassy eyes

gleaming in the sizzling dimness.

We walk down the corridor, deep

into the viscera of the museum to see

 

he is carrying a metal oxygen tank

hung on his back, the round venom

yellow sign he is holding says:

sugár veszély, which means radiation

 

danger. Isn’t it both tragic and comic,

I ask, that sugar is one of the most

terrifying words in Hungarian

while it’s the sweetest in your tongue?

 

Isn’t that how life is, you say, holding

my hand to put it on the luscious love

bite on your neck. See, what is poison

is also honey, and vice versa, my love.