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JAN OWENTownEisenstadt, AustriaThe alliance was uneasy even then.Close to the borderwe found that dayyour country as it wasbefore the warrenamed Kismarton 'Eisenstadt.'Arched doors and gateways, fruit trees,angular houses, plain or baroque as clouds,Eszterhazy Palace where Haydn played,and Liszt in the Square,elegant even in stone.In the little cake-shop where you boughtthe cakes of your childhood,a/mas retes pozsonyi kifli,they spoke the old language still,only you paid in schillings not in forint."KOszonom szepen, "smiled the broad-cheeked woman.The church was a simple dome,a beehive of russet shadows and yellow light,round and warm as a country stove,homely enough for a child to believe in God.The sky was open as the A/jO/d.We sat on a wall to eat."Look."A walnut tree by a barn, a wooden cart,geese honking through wet grassand an arc of rainbow in bruised light."Hungary."You could not swallow,staring along the fault-line of a dream.Hungary. As close as we ever came.WESTERLY, No.2, JUNE, 1989 61