MOTTO

I'd Rather go Naked

Naked through all the streets I'd rather go,
let them laugh at me if it gives them fun.

Naked through all the streets I'd rather go,
or have them jail me for a crazy one.

Naked through all the streets I'd rather go,
and freeze like trees do, blackness petrified.

Naked through all the streets I'd rather go,
and die as the man who ends with suicide.

Naked through all the streets I'd rather go,
act like a poor dull fool you'd all despise.

Naked through all the streets I'd rather go,
but never dress up in a suit of lies.
 

by PÉTER KUCZKA

first published in Irodalmi Ujság (Literary Gazette) of Budapest, September 8th 1956.
English version by Raymond Souster

in: Ilona Duczyska and Karl Polanyi, The Plough and the Pen: Writings from Hungary, 1930-1956,
London: Peter Owen, 1963.