H/Eart
english translations of hungarian poems by lotti
bg - balaton by andrás ZALAVÁRI, 2020
János, ÁFRA
Tibor, BABICZKY
Ákos, GYŐRFFY
András Ferenc, KOVÁCS
István, PION
Márton, SIMON
translator's preface: the original language, hungarian, doesn't mandatory distinguish genders when talking about a third person, and the poem uses this given opportunity. I tried to stay true to the language as much as I could, therefore I decided to use they/them as a genderneutral singular third person, please read them as like that.
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János, ÁFRA: The Banalities of Closeness
I keep thinking about them, I plan
to place them on a shelf, but for now I’m only
trying how it’s the best, they can also be
someone like that, arranging people on
shelves, writing post-its about with whom,
when till when, what and how can they do,
so it’s easier to find a path and as well loose it,
they don’t risk, they want an aim and an easy conscience,
the only thing that bothers them, that they can’t
situate themselves on a single defined
surface, they tear down to pages, this way they can
be more in particular pieces than by themselves,
in faraway points from each other, placed
between unique books, hardly dangling out,
since it’s safer if they slip themselves
under bigger sheets or between covers,
if they like just as an organic part of
everything would be, because it is the
only way worth living, isn’t it? leaving a mark
after ourselves, slipped between other one’s pages
János, ÁFRA: The Firsts
before our time, the eye was given,
but it has seen everything, hence it couldn’t
get to know anything on its own,
so they've coated them with a film that
it wouldn’t open to infinite, cut it,
drawn a hewed skin above it, and similarly
they’ve given shape to its dense overflows,
hence from now on two of them, shared,
can see the appearing objects,
yet they could encounter without the
other one, back from the images of the films,
from seeing everything, to the absence of light,
but on the beginning of time, they’ve been placed on the face
into a trench, because the second eye was sure,
that from it a spotless tear-route paths to the skin,
hence the first spring can’t be consubstantial with it,
their connection is sealed away from then
into the depth of the organs, cleans out, which is torn
but the two eyes until the last drought
don’t exist for one-another
Tibor, BABICZKY: 25
Like in the depth of the forest, the wounded
animal tears, tries to flee, I run towards
you, you are my haven in the midst of the
emptiness' salvo,
to be able to touch you before all my
power leaks through my limbs, to be able to
see you before the last scenery takes its
place in my eyesight.
We haven’t been born for the happiness, nor
for the suffering, but just for each other
and for the thing, that will be born from us, a
begin in the end.
Because we are the begin, we are the end,
and life trims our desires, grafts our
words in the time in-between them, until at
last, beyond talks and
all above desires too, created then
decayed and recreated, we dance our
steps, orbiting the same as planets in a
heavenly order.
Tibor, BABICZKY: 36
Our life is a mirage in the mirror of the past,
we are solitary, but who’s really dare
to stay alone utterly and permanently
and die into that?
Because ally is the solitude, but the
loneliness is not. I long and seek after.
I could believe, that belief redeem, yet so
my heart resent.
Tibor, BABICZKY: Oriental Journey
When I departed, the time was already
late. It was late
to depart to the east.
A hissing shadow slithered
from my head before my feet.
It could have happened like this. It happened.
It was twisting like a snake
and splayed out like a deceased.
It gripped my feet.
I stepped. It bit in me.
When I departed it was already
late. The time was late.
The starry road was in gleam.
Started from my shadowhead,
the road, ending at my feet.
Tibor, BABICZKY: The Islander (excerpt)
In the northern corner of the island
face towards the sea
a man stands.
Windows behind him, loneliness in front of.
He's listening the sirensongs of the seagulls.
Ákos, GYŐRFFY: Biography
At summertime, he used to hoe the grapes at midnight.
Ákos, GYŐRFFY: Indian Cradle
When it appeared behind the glass
of the National Museum of American Indian,
I almost broke into tears.
Maybe because nothing can be as empty as
a 200 years old indian cradle.
András Ferenc, KOVÁCS: Stage at Satu Mare
Have they ever switched the stage
Lights off on you? Have
You been afraid, freezing in
Pitch-darkness on a
Silent stage? Have they ever
Lit the spotlights in
Your eyes again?... And have your
Whole life illumined?
András Ferenc, KOVÁCS: Variations on Cavafy
In the lifetime of the nights
too much the feels, memories
sweeping of bodies,
and withering, wondering
are glistening back
in the cortex - shadows of
the secret beds fill
up with pure intelligence
with pure wistfulness.
István, Pion: Monologue III.
I should have said my deepest condolences, that death is woeful – which has been said with deep shock by a stranger, who shakes your hand, moreover hugs you, nevertheless brings you tight, between your bodies not a soul can even squeezes in itself, an unfortunate happening, he said, really unfortunate – but you remember, I haven’t said anything, indifference, I caughed up from my lungs, and it tasted like lime on the wall, if we can call it a taste at all, ankle-biters were whispering around us, cries, who cries, why does he cry, ta, ti-ta, ta-ta-ti-ta, longer and longer, however they knew, yet they hid behind questions, body in a dress, me before you, you before death, hid unseekable, they played an eternal hide-and-seek, they were the huts, you were the not-even-hidden child, whom his mother doesn’t notice, not even before her eyes, where is this child, where has he gone, I couldn’t find him anywhere, where are you, my little one, come forward, death
Márton, SIMON – Blood and Watermelon Juice
to the pictures of Araki Nobujosi
Solely look at me,
when I say don't.
Stick your tongue out.
Harder.
Lay down on the ground.
I remember a blonde
teenage girl from my childhood,
she came along on the winter street,
she was gorgeous,
in a wide, sparkling stripe
her snot was running into her mouth.
I really would have liked
to kiss her.
It starts with this,
which ends with,
that I’m only, with
a bowl of fresh fish soup
and of course, with my death,
in debt to the one,
who's watching right now the cat’s,
back on, hunting down
cedar shadows on the balcony.
But it's not a problem.
Stretch out your legs.
This is what makes me happy -
well, that isn’t, that I know,
crying doesn't mean
you are sad,
but that I don’t have any idea
what it means other than,
you are crying.
If at least I'd be a monster,
with poisonous skin,
but I'm just latex, latexshell,
a broken, talking durex.
Lift your arm.
Bite into it.
Inside my head,
neon is buzzing.
Only this stare
has been left of me, with which
I scratch your face.
Ice-needle. ECG.
And then, so you could laugh at me,
throw the bouquet
and spill the beer on me,
I whisper in your ear,
that all the flowers are
genitals.
It's not happiness,
it's a picture.
It isn't floating, just exactly
sinking too slowly.
The meeting of navel and ear,
at most. Summer blast.
On flowered
oilcloth
blood and watermelon juice.
It doesn’t console me,
spit in my palm -not a problem, if it won't console you either.
The sea makes me realize,
that you had never won.
The happening can't stand
metaphors.
The lack of it either.
There isn't really an excuse.
The hell
is tiled
with gazes,
you know
and no harm for nothing
therefore, for everything.
Kneel up,
temperature chart tucked into a bin.
In the flat also no-one.
Don't look at me.
The flame of the left on
stove is blue.
Simon, MÁRTON: IT'S
It's this, that we are standing on the two sides
of the cemetery gate and we are like
just serving with a volleyball,
passing your death back and forth.
And then I bring an axe,
to cut down the tree which has grown before the entryway,
that you can come out, but you say,
don't be silly, my boy.
And you don't even reach to my shoulder.
This became the only place, where
I can still have some words with you,
this has left, nothing else
of course, if we don’t countwhen at nights, as I go home from the store,
carrying cornflakes and milk, out of reflex
I start talking to you. These two.
I eat breakfast for dinner too.
What do you think about that?
I don't even know what this is.
Preoccupies of course, it occupies
but it doesn’t interest me as it should interest.
I mean: let me simplify it to
personal pronouns, the numbing, throat-grabbing,
indigestible et cetera, let me speak.
Let me fish out from the cold, turbid mirror
some primary message.
You became mud. My mouth is filled with you.
It's this thing, that at the age of eleven
it twists in our mind, that we could even
commit a suicide with the rest of your prescribed medicines
(a lot have left after you) but even then,
we have enough brain to know, they are not good for that.
So, the things which weren't useful to keep
you alive, aren’t even useful to end
us. That, out of practical reasons,
we don't put it into parallels with so called love.
Being a smart kid is the worst.
But we could simplify this down.
In the dairy, a sweet, particular smell spreads,
the wall is yellow, the naked lightbulb is dirty. Fly paper.
They gyrate the milk in 3000 liters steel tube,
mix it, twirl it. Years later, far from there,
at the back of a seaside warehouse, you saw
tubes like that. Out of blue plastic,
but the system is the same.
They breed crabs in them.
You go on from here, your crying is better.
Márton, SIMON: The Theory of Diving
Mother, they named - the black pitches
on the surface of the moon - seas. Of course
they are seas only in theory,
they have nothing to do with water. However,
everything is a matter of point of view,
and then that black pitch, which
became your breast, is a sea too.
And in your lungs, in your stomach, it’s water -
yet I remember well. And because in
the depth, they can't hear it well - did I
really could have said it all?
I’ll be good, just don't - yeah, things
like that are useless even there.
I put the paint on my face
you left here, trying to love myself
more like this. And, I guess,
sooner or later, I drink those two
bottles of perfume you have since then
what else can I do with them?You’ve said something it turned out:
in the end. And I wasn’t paying attention.
Ever since then there’s no connection, as this is not.
Just steps on a beach of a theoretical
sea. On the unsealed part of the beach.