Poems, regardless of any outcome, cross the battlefields, tending the wounded, listening to the wild monologues of the triumphant or the fearful. They bring a kind of peace. Not by anaesthesia or easy reassurance, but by recognition and the promise that what has been experienced cannot disappear as if it had never been. — John Berger, And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos
What follows is just such a poem — an interview excerpt yes, from a man standing in front of his home on 9th Street in the Numbered Streets neighborhood in Miskolc, Hungary. But a poem nonetheless. It is about loss, a loss so ephemeral and hard to grasp it cuts deeply at the soul of the neighborhood and the people who lived and still live there today. Eric’s photographs here are of the people who have not yet left. They have had to say goodbye to family and neighbors who were forced to leave. They have had to witness the neighborhood disappear.
On Saying Goodbye
Continually. In batches. They left one by one.
Everybody is suffering for the neighbors. Because you know if you meet people on the street you stop and have a conversation, and ask them how they are doing.
We respected each other. We loved each other. If we needed something, we helped each other. We went round to each other's.
When they left, the people who were living here?
“Take care of yourselves. Take care. Find a good place for yourself.” Because this is the only thing I can tell them. Because they have no money to buy something. They can only find some small things to rent. And that, “It hurts that you have to go.”
Bad, to be honest. I miss them. Just imagine, I often come out here to the gate. No one, no one comes along here.
