Abstractions

  

Something’s gone wrong between us.

Something that's never existed.

How come so insidiously?

So that I wasn’t even there at all?

 

The same way. It’s always the same

way. He’s good, he never inflicts

wounds. The other him? His own

light makes him shiver.

 

Wicked, gothic lace-trimmed neck. Ugly

posture, hopeful-cautious nakedness.

Infertile woman. How trite!

Too much and too little at the same time.

 

Little abstractions! I’ve composed

you all. It’s not very funny to

compose this way. It’s in fact like a

great big overstatement. Like love.

 

The two children, who not for me -

touched me deeply. Of course,

I didn’t show it. For want of better I

lived the part of the beautiful woman.

 

  (Translated by N. Ullrich Katalin)

  

Among Dusty Stage-Props

 

Once again I looked at myself
in the mirror.

Once again I was overcome by
self-pity.

Where are the hard manners I demand
from myself?

I take hold of my mirror
and leave.

 

  (Translated by N. Ullrich Katalin)

  

Charms, discounted

 

Pungent, yellow – seven rays.

Hits the eyes.

Piercing stench. It is being sterilized.

 

„Act natural!” Secondhand clothes

by the kilo.

Across the Chinese market and below

 

 led by the coloured smell of poverty.

The rubber. A condom failure.

Use, toss, and let there be

 

heady odorous-orgy.

Wealth – is in unconscious pleasure.

Holding out another measure.

 

A flashy skirt – perhaps. But as the eye

runs down the thights it’s clear,

my tights were bought last year.

 

A ladder in the fabric. As though

it were the brand. A streak remains,

a stitch unravelled by your gaze.

 

  (Translated by Owen Good, finishing

  touches by Kinga Fabó)

 

 

Everything Arises

   in the Sudden

      Emptiness

 

I was getting down

to basics,

when the telephone

 

began to ring.

I didn'nt dare

 

touch it. Ominous

silence before the holiday.

 

  (Translated by Michael Castro

  and Gábor G. Gyukics)

  

Five Haikus

 

Ripens sweet fragrance,        
makes its fruits grow and gain weight -
as the Moon’s mask grows.

I’m forced on the shore
by brackets of holidays:
the world in-between.

Moon’s rising upwards,
I can’t follow it that high:
drags its solitude.

Neither swaggering,
nor in all submissiveness,
though it’s uncommon.

It’s throwing fake pearls
- just a fountain not a spring -
tears being stamped out.

 

  (Translated by N. Ullrich Katalin)

 

 

Isadora Duncan Dancing

 

Like sculpture at first. Then, as if the sun rose in her, long

gesture.

A small smile; then very much so.

 

The beauty

of the rite shone; whirling.

 

She whirled and whirled,

flaming.

Only the body spoke. The body carried her

 

language. 

 

Her dance a spell

swirling the air, a spiral she was

 

 and

 

her shawl, the half circle around her,

the curve of the sea-shore and

girl,

 

the dancer and the dance apart…

 

 

(Trascreated by Cathy Strisik and Veronica Golos

based on N. Ullrich Katalin’s translation.)

 

 

It Goes to the Grave with the Bearer of the Secret,

   While Motions Freeze in the Depths of his Body

 

As if oozing from the the edges of

fissures.

Couldn't get beyond the stains.

 

Sitting in a soft garden, in a semi-circle.

In the tiny crack between truth

and falsity.

 

  (Translated by Michael Castro

  and Gábor G. Gyukics)

 

 

Jailer

 

 

Every season has its turn.
They come, come, come, it’s so stern.
It kills me it’s always the same.
They never change their order.
They don’t ask my permission.

 

Every season tortures me.
They come, come, come, no mercy.
I’m ground, ground, and ground
like a merry-go-round
by this unceasing energy –

 

keeping me on path. Broken
on the wheel so forsaken
- more and more dead more alive –
I keep spinning around
with them in the depth of time.

 

  (Translated by: N. Ullrich Katalin)

 

 

Not Because It's Chic

 

Here I have a place

where I can be said.

I adore it. I adore it.

 

I exist only in roles.

I want colors! Colors!

Just as above me the sky is always blue.

 

Not because it's chic. Not because of that.

 

  (Translated by Michael Castro

  and Gábor G. Gyukics)

 

 

Poison

I don't know what it is but very ill-
intended. Sure a woman belongs.
And something like a laughter.

I am rotating the city on me,
rotating my beauty. That's that!
Many keys, small keyholes whirling.

Gazes cannot be all in vain. And the answer?

Merely a jeer.
The vase hugs me, killing, can't breathe.

Now my features - even with the best intentions -
cannot be claimed as a beauty.
And she? The girl? Her smarty perfume

is Poison. For me a real poison indeed.
And the vase?
His hugging kills me.

But what am I to do without?

 

  (Translated by me.)

 

 

Cancer

 

Soul would perish or body?
Or both simultaneously?
Or would two different deaths

come separately and catch?

 

I thought to myself it shouldn’t.
It should send no warning signs.
Let it yet remain a secret.
Let it remain outside.

 

It has occupied my ego.
No secret, it doesn’t know.
I can see out no more.
Why should it from me withhold?

 

Will I die? Won’t I die?
I am dying but still alive.
I thought it would percieve me.
I thought it would have an insight.

 

Have I died? Am I dying?
Should I myself decide?
I thought it would listen to me.
I thought it would send warning signs.

It could do so -- I’ve got four ears.
Four, just like a prime-androgyne.
When four ears prick themselves,
there will happen no tragedy.

 

  (Translated by N Ullrich Katalin)

 

 

The Ears

As if my ears were the sacraments, a crowd
appears, appears before them. Lucky
I have nice big ears.
Deep and hollow.
The hip and breast sizes are coming.

Here comes the lonely one. She wants my husband.
Here comes the housewife. She's married, frigid.
When she doesn't come, she learns languages,
travels.
The lesbian? Doesn't come at all. Though

I would seduce her. If nothing comes of it, my
Ears would perk themselves. (Big as they are.)
Feminine women I don't invite on principle.
Nor any men. I go
to them.

But all they want is my ears.
And the mouths? Nonstop talkers.
And my ears? My ears are mute.
I change only my earrings from time to time.
My ears are mine.

  (Translated by Michael Castro

  and Gábor G. Gyukics)

 

 

The Word’s Color Change

Open, the sea appeared asleep.
Carrying its waves.
A pulse under the muted winter scene.
Throwing a smile on the beach.

A nun-spot on the hot little body.
A color on the broken glass.
An early closed gesture.
Lovely as the sea retreated.
Throwing a smile on the beach.

I wanted to remain an object.
But, no, immortality is not mine.
I can defend myself.
Waiting for punishment.

This and the same happened together.
Silently, I sat in the glass.
Only the spot wandered on naked scene.
Sounds did not continue.

Only an omitted gesture.
Happiness like an unmoving dancer.
Beatings on naked boned back.

And the sea no longer immortal.

 

  (Translated from the Hungarian

  by Zsuzsanna Ozsváth, and Martha Satz)

 

 

While In Action

           

While in action you don’t disturb

me a bit. Just go to bed and sleep.

You’re being so vulgar, hon. And like

snow: soft and sneaky.

 

Admitted: thirty minutes sentiments, inane

silence, claptrap. Shot. Ladies,

in my ping-pong heart the game is

at rest. Some other time. Perhaps.

                       

(Translated by N. Ullrich Katalin)

 

 

DO IT CAREFULLY

 

White hotel. Where sin is absent. And so

is guilty conscience. You languish.

 

You're decadent. Cheat on me Mondays.

Mondays

 

I like.

 

HE WAS WILTED AND DECADENT

 

He tries to come, in vain. He jerks me

off as if I were a tired personal object.

 I imagine the rest.

 

I'd like to come on your face, he said.

Did he want to humiliate me? What

was he thinking? After that, for two

days my eyes were inflamed.

 

Mis-enjoyment

 

He asked about

my favourite scent.

 

Then left.

Now I am singing, being

 

misgivingly polite,

like – for him – otherwise – a rest.

 

Growing energy: arrests.

Slowly growing killing cells

 

retaliate: retell

each word. Every gesture.

 

Her and her and her and her.

Me? A he? Never.

 

Never, never, never ends.

Not even after my death.

 

Singing another – me – at best?

Better than a lover left.

 

Each word is a verge, an urge, an edge,

a hook.

 

I misunderstand to be

misundertood.

 

  (This poem has been written only

  and originally in English

  by the Hungarian author, Kinga Fabó)

 

OR YES

 

To be a sad empty vase

to be a withered flowergirl in a vase

to be a tiny microphone

to be a crawl upon a shoulder

to be a touch of one's secret

to be silent and to remain there

to be a cuddle on a palm

to be a microphone in a body

to be a secret

slow, final and joyous

to be white and foolish

to be and to flee

to be nothing and undetected

 

SNOWQUEENSNO  NG

 

When I was beautiful with hate and around-around I

When I was beautiful with hate and the implanted

heart of the Snowqueen and I still wasn't absolutely his

I When I was beautiful with joy and around-around

then I wasn't scared or I was very scared I He had a

blonde voice and melodic hair I wbite, tasteful,

unscented we flickered out above our unrestrained red­

 sticky orgy I Quietly marched through our own red­

sticky bodies and I felt how the braided fairies untied

themselves in my hair, flew around and filled the room

I I felt that from th,e outside I didn't look alive I With

superior confidence I thought that  now I should live

and a Salingerish Zen koan came to mind I this I

Which way do the sunflowers turn in the night I His

stiffness reflected an unmeasurable tenderness in me

and his tenderness reflected unmeasurable stiffness I I

 knew that I loved him and my body filled up with body

and my eyes with eyes, and at the same time I was

crying inside and downward but I couldn't find tears I

They .transformed into evil mirror-drops gleaming

like icicles sarcastically,  threateningly, with the silence

of killers I not expressed but experienced, joyful and         

raw hard final devotion screaming laying low inside me

I I felt his intensity radiating through his poetry,

radiating through his body, but it didn't have, couldn't

have realism only, I imagined, but an internal

emptiness bringing the machinery in motion that  was

impossible to unplug /I was interested only in his

motion and I would want to say that I ...

But already it wasn't possible.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Vissza a bloghoz