Temptation Quotes

“My hands are peasant’s hands. They can’t play violin,
Can’t pluck the strings of a fancy mandolin.
They have no place in a grand philharmonica
All they have is this cheap harmonica.

A humble thing, no decoration north or south.
Only wood and tin, as naked as my mouth.
A plain wooden cradle, a plain wooden coffin
Is the song of this simple piece of wood and tin.

So easily a violin will break its strings
Like all those delicate and fancy things.”
Naked you go out, as naked you came in
Is the song of this simple piece of wood and tin.

Its song a song of poverty, of life and death,
And how my mother coughs out all her breath.
Perhaps the only way of taking all this in
Is softly, by night, on this piece of wood and tin.

There is a carpenter. A poor man, so I hear.
And to this my song, he may sometime lend an ear.
Perhaps one day his father, too, will listen in,
To the song of this simple wood and tin.”
― János Székely, Temptation