Mária Ferenčuhová

Poetry

1. in the city of dogs /

   

   

   ENGSLO

   I/

   the crystals have grown too fast: to crush

   between one’s teeth, to scratch the neck. to

   copy the curves on canvas silently with slender

   fingers.

   the water here by the roadside: perhaps to

   preserve sludge by the process of sewage

   disposal, according to an old secret formula.

   the smell — the will to survive, the smell of

   cheese and fish.

   and small stains on the surface: none other

   than yesterday’s delicious dogfood.

    

   II/

   mice are fast, too:

   underground. in colours. under the seat. they

   seek food. in between two trains.

   they went completely deaf: guided — like you

   — by the trembling of wheels and legs.

    

   III/

   the last shells. of previous days. (to preserve

   sludge by the process of sewage disposal).

   another of your faces in the darkened mirror.

   each time belonging to a race that is enchanted.

    

   IV/

   you feel sorry for the slow ones, for all those

   who stopped to show their palm and bare

   forearm, all those who let their private skin

   slip out from the sleeve exposed to full view.

   and if a casual smile stops on you, it will

   remain casual.

   what you wear under your hair

   here too is mostly called by one of the

   common first names.

   © Mária Ferenčuhová, translated by Marián Andričík

2. hidden subtitles /

   

   

   ENGSLO

   × × ×

   I didn’t say what I expected to: what I’d lifted

   the receiver for. I just laughed. between one cold

   finger and the next — between thumb and index

   — I twisted the glass stem. looked at my feet

   dipped into water. a green reflection: an excessive

   movement: towel. room. lamp. darkness.

   in two countries live a silent and a screaming

   reality: right and left profiles of banality. and

   between them a face that belongs to no one.

   emails and letters are written without flourish.

   the radio is switched on, by turns silently and

   loud. I disconnect the phone. the noise does not

   subside: more and more windows light up in the

   house opposite.

    

   × × ×

   a/ with the same pen, with the same blue colour:

   I even recognise the writing. the slowness of the

   typewriter, in extending the leg, in the slope of

   the instep, in the quality of silence. the sound of

   a carefully turned page: paper snagged on the

   edge of the sleeve.

   b/ I can’t explore other people’s balconies

   endlessly. to compare blue with grey and to

   squander each new sleep in a disquieting

   investigation, wanting to know if the distant

   foot of the hill has vanished too. if I am deeper

   and deeper within.

   c/ to put in the envelope, after signing. to clean

   the shoe first on the kerb, then on the lawn.

   to check the nameplate on the door. to lock it.

   possibly to air the room again.

    

   × × ×

   if they tell you: she left tragically,

   you picture at least a dull explosion, scattered

   inanimate parts of furniture, smudged pavements,

   or at least shreds of a weathered cardboard box

   stuck on the windscreen,

   if they tell you: fish were the first to stop looking,

   you don’t know what to imagine,

   they have no idea what to tell you,

   they have no idea what effect it can have on you

   later

    

   × × ×

   m. z.

   shake me. pass through me.

   on the bark, on the light. turn me over on my

   stomach. still walking. insert me between two

   sides. sew me up.

   drink me down with water. make me cosy.

   vertical. pre-prepare. jump over in the reflection.

   tell anyone about me. disperse. set words on

   me, silence me. soothe me. draw me in the

   waiting room. make good use of what you’ve

   learned:

   speech slips out from behind both of us. I am

   pasting you in. … to follow the linear story of

   the lived first at the place where it passively

   succumbs: country after cataclysm, volcano…

   © Mária Ferenčuhová, translated by Marián Andričík

3. in a literary tearoom /

   

   

   ENGSLO

   1/ in a literary tearoom where coldness gathers

   close above the floor: oppression.

   over the glasses and next to the humming

   voices of retired grammar school teachers: it’s

   impossible to move one’s shoulders.

   I read the proper way: I read.

   you already know that in big cities speech

   permeates the posture and willy-nilly implies

   independence.

   2/ exact dimensions of anxiety: how not to be

   scared of the determination of one’s time?

   certain women in photos of their youth,

   ingeborg bachmann, say, cannot look foreign:

   unknown.

   with no more smell, you’ll apprehend another

   loss: the one whose shoulder yesterday you

   pressed your nose to in the dark, he too has

   passed away. Even so, it’s all right: movement

   disappears from the past and the pressure on

   your skin would be uselessly painful.

   3/ but you also feel faint: is there anything

   you haven’t been through! thus you admit to

   calloused knees and a feeble smile, a bitter taste

   of coffee; the smell of it clings to your palate.

   we remain sitting. it’s still necessary to discuss

   why somewhere the top of the oral cavity is

   called a roof and elsewhere a palate. and also to

   name the fatigue of the dragging day, of slowed

   gestures, of a stiff back. finally we agree that any

   short dog-name will do.

   © Mária Ferenčuhová, translated by Marián Andričík

4. le dépays /

   

   

   ENGSLO

   (1982 — 2002)

   ch. m.

   you say that being on first name terms

   has no other meaning than to indicate the gap

   between one who has travelled and the one

   who is writing now.

   I am presuming on a basis of affinity with

   the one who is just now reading in the distance:

   with you.

   you say that where the person is with

   whom you are on first name terms, time is

   a river that runs only at night.

   foreign words are here now and they are yours:

   an arrow, it’s said, has no clearer aim than life:

   what matters is the politeness shown to the bow.

    

   I/

   a twisted bough is accepted by the tree just like

   a straight one. at least at first sight. you count

   the leaves, look for insects.

   the empty nest is in the grass, though, and it is

   pointless to blame the wind.

    

   II/

   you rest your eyes on brown, a dog’s colour,

   you remember arnold who jumped under a car

   because of a doe.

   you can’t lean against a bar stool, even the wall

   avoids you. you recall the doe that jumped into

   the flooded river because the island was sinking.

   To blame the river is pointless too.

    

   × × ×

   before you dare to write, you distort the sequence

   of breaths: you deny the existence of

   the event: you dissolve its boundaries, because

   speech will create its own: impose breaths and

   firmness of the voice.

   what would do is a fragile:

   window, moulded glass to which you gradually

   add substances with different melting points.

   what would do is to line up all first syllables into

   a chain…

   then to take over responsibility. to soothe it:

   that after the first fall, its shards will become

   unbreakable.

    

   × × ×

   lines began to run out of the frames too often,

   allegedly their present demarcation will not

   do. colours settle on any surfaces. they dare to

   interfere in words. the frames therefore move

   to other areas. the only thing that remains

   valid is said to be linked neither with speech

   nor senses.

   the vector: the carrier: the clear direction. a

   heavy vehicle, calmly sinking into muddy soil.

    

   × × ×

   I’ll speak you. but as if the drawing hand still

   belonged

   to another, and the reclining body to the soil,

   unbuttoned, soft,

   I say: jump, and I say: to see you still white,

   downhill, aslant.

   I don’t know when I write and I don’t know

   where — space is random, created by the

   coordinates of fingers on keys, multidimensional,

   dissociated by movement, being restored.

   to the place with no curve sewn by a pen,

   connection with no sounds bound by breath,

   you still doubt the possibility of speech.

   for now, you are still the interior of thinking,

   and your skin is the interior here, too.

   © Mária Ferenčuhová, translated by Marián Andričík

5. The Principle of Uncertainty /

   

   

   ENGSLO

   Bright Cities

   I.

   The summer is not going, it stays like inflammation on stuffy roads,

   warm stone, no trace of steps (and yet humidity in the air);

   wounds are not healing, the same movement every afternoon — to wipe

   the dust from one’s eyes and the oil from hot wheels. October.

   Not even return: continuance in crevices — the city doesn’t remember,

   nor do you wish to: numb footsoles, chapped hands, why not admit —

   a strait, a passage, from behind the corner surfacing instead of (another)

   memory, a street. Another one. Identical.

   And a madman on the platform, quite desolate

   (no one is scared of him any more), change at Réaumur-Sébastopol:

   on the very top a man is sleeping in his socks,

   a bandage sticking out of one, but hardly anyone dares cover his nose.

   Behind the window without blinds someone gets drunk,

   quite solitary, behind a window with a blind I change my make-up,

   I don’t air the place, I silently invoke the telephone,

   till finally I fall asleep.

    

   II.

   A finger code, noise, secret entrances, to be angry with oneself

   for being (in the first moment) unrestrained, for being (in the second)

   reasonable, and resent one’s loneliness — where’s the virtue in that?

   From the point of view of eternity, it doesn’t matter whether in this

   world, side by side with this body (or some other), from the momentary

   point of view: to choose emptiness. And wait.

    

   An old woman, in fact rather mouldered than old, perhaps senile

   and possibly bewildered for ages past, takes the lift up and down,

   greets at great length, aloud, repeats “yes”, “yes” over and over again,

   addresses everyone as “madam”, “sir” with an assiduous smile,

   and touches children’s cheeks with her fingers.

   A pin in someone’s stomach, a word in someone’s heart:

   quarantine, forty days of silence.

   A flame, cellophane, a scorched image,

   you infect the whole colony with yourself, and you’re surprised

   when they condemn you.

    

   III.

   There are wooden houses, plastered or just stuck together with cloth,

   carpets instead of walls, cables in the corners, dust in the joints

   and the wind under the door.

   A jug kettle, a microwave oven, a hot plate,

   someone who sleeps,

   not moving. He who follows meanders, not aware of the riverbanks

   bare of green, indifferent to the pavement: who continues on

   to where people ride camels

   with knapsack on back,

   where grey blocks of flats stand in the sand like a suburb,

   only they are burning,

   with tents below the windows,

   a waterless fountain and the sky in flames,

   you want to go back to the river, there’s no way,

   — not in the dream, and therefore not at all —

   you need only to open your eyes, run along the walls,

   burning carpets, acrid smoke,

   barefoot and apronless:

   those stairs

   are still there.

   © Mária Ferenčuhová, translated by Marián Andričík