MÁTRAI After Kabul, Dortmund or Bucharest it’s pretty,
after Prague it just looks dilapidated.
Its effect depends on what you saw before it,
what does it follow – BUDAPEST.
After Lisbon it’s sort of familiar,
after Rome it’s jagged, ragged, peculiar.
Pest is unliveable, but unleaveable.
Awesomely gruesome, sexily secondary.
Look at the Oktogon after the nauseating
Champs-Élysées! It’s both too much and too little.
Four corner houses plain in four different ways,
but I’ve been a guest in all of them. I danced
in this one. I bought a stamp in the other.
In this one is my bank. In that one a woman.
In one way or another, they’re all “home” to me.
