MIHALY BABITS BEFORE EASTER If my lips shred to pieces - oh, courage! this wild, wild burgeoning month of March, drinking excitement with trees all excited, drunk with seething, tantalising, intoxicating, blood-bearing, salt-scented March winds, by grey, heavy skies, enmeshed in the murderous mill wheel; if my lips shred to pieces - more courage! if bleeding raw with the song, and if drowned by the thunderous Mill, my song cannot be heard but merely tasted by tasting the pain, even so, give me yet more courage -oceans of blood!- bring the bitter song of bloodshed! God, we have now heroes to glorify! the mighty giants’ blind, bloody victories, engines and red-hot gun barrels busily packed with cold compresses for their dreadful exercise: but I will sing no paean to victory, the rough-shod iron tread of trampling triumph is as paltry to me, as the deadly mill of the tyrant: the teeming, pregnant winds of March, mighty rush, fresh tingling blood, won’t let me s...