Fallen Cherub
(gate and chain)
Churns butter with a chain. Harvests blind. Its muscles carved.
All of its eyes gouged with a thumb. God tore every face
of it. The eagle, the bull and the lion. Its cowardice a sin conclusion: human.
Remained naked. Alone. Human, who knows God.
Its house a ramshackle hut. Carcass feast. Put chains everywhere
to know where
to go. To avoid the wall at last, which it battered with its fist.
The gate, on which there is no latch. Padlock chain. On all fours to no avail.
Its wings removed. Rotted by dead leaves under trees. It can feel its stud.
Chewed its tongue off itself; so it would not have to reply if being asked.
Old Sunday
Wind troubling with sand
Tears pigeon-cries
Gathering dust in the attic.
In place of a fallen broken slate
A handful of Light embraces a newspaper page
Soaked to a crisp turned brown
Wording frozen in the past.
Dust from the pounding ceiling
Flies within eyes fading to white
Old sigh. Swirling soaring
On a spring Sunday smell of cooked meat lingers
In the garden dying of time.
Memory of the family sits around the big table
The silence. The lonely street loiters on its own.
The small gate shrieks but it was only the wandering wind that kicked it
Then moved on when it saw the raw-boned old dog it does not
Bark at strangers any more. Will let anyone in.
My secret
A secret while every detail may seem familiar
like that of the girl who has been my guest three times a week for six years.
Every time I draw her around with my tongue
for her salty figure and the blueness of her taste will adapt
behind my plasma globe forehead.
… and so my fruit got into her navel…
It is like coffee being made I only hear and understand.
The smell gets into my room later, door and two windows are closed
I let the secret swallow me.
It is enough to hear and feel to know that the point is to be a bit
curious.
A conflict is arising in me. Alea iacta est.
… my secret is hidden from me, while every detail may seem familiar…
(The die is cast)
The trouble that does not matter
The trouble is that motivation is gone
Let's take you in your cardigan
I watch from the door as you sit there and
The neon tube on the dressing table makes you look pale.
You brush your hair and I don't want to
Picture you naked with just a brush in your hand.
The trouble is that the things I read
Make me cling. I get offended by
Nothings. Like a magician
Who has been debunked. It's just like
Sunrise in winter. I know it is there
But only the tip of my nose freezes to the cold glass.
The trouble is that I have been ploughed.
Strange seeds have been sown in me. Something
Else hatches inside. Not me.
My pelt is not the lawn. The original in summer
Is green and full of colourful flowers, in winter
Scabby brown. Rotting straw colour.
My ugliness does not matter if it is Mine.
Survival
The ceiling sighs.
Bed? Room. Hanging liane swing bed? –
That embraces every tomorrow. Stays like the outgoing
Incoming colourful cables behind the monitor.
(it only works like this)
Window to the scenery.
(eyes) – green, brown, black.
Angels looking down beat a drum. And by
Looking down I mean despise.
I cannot be helped any more.
Waited in vain.
Though I waited. It seems I am really
Left on my own. But for nothing. No avail.
My blood is border. The same scrawly drawing like
The riverbed of Tisza.
I am knocked over by myself. My decision. Let my apple tree drown.
Fish for a fisherman! Fresh water for a drunk!
Coffin for a suicide. Riverbank for a bridge.
But no! My angel snubs me. Again.
You are not free like the river. The last
Who walked on water was killed.
⋯
Marci and the single little shoe
Marci is a pond (more like a retention pond*) behind the college.
Most of it is just reed growing wild. In the eighties,
young burnouts* in studded leather jackets went there to have sex. Or sniffed glue
underneath the willow trees.
A fifteen-minute Nyíregyháza-Woodstock walk connected it to the council estate.
Then it was dredged out, and now white-collar millionaires live in the place
of condoms and lovemade reeds.
(can imagine how many condoms and used panties got into the concrete)
As a child, I used to go there to peep. And to play with matches.
(it was a miracle that I set it on fire only once)
In winter, we used to cycle-rodeo on its ice. And I laughed in pain
how bloody painful my knee was. But what I want to talk about happened in summer.
My sister was really adamant about my taking her along.
She kept asking. I got tired of it. Come along then. I walked down with her.
She found a stick and wanted to use it to pick something out of the water
but couldn't reach it. She was sliding on the steep bank lower and lower
until she landed in the mud among the tadpoles. I grabbed
her arm. Pulled her out. My heart was beating fast. Her fragile
wrist in my hand. Her pulse was throbbing like hell. Her shoe
got stuck. I was the elder one. I was preparing myself
for the tongue-lashing. She was hobbling home along with me
in one shoe. Why should I lie.* Finally, I told the truth.
I had a dream of the odd child's shoe. And it belongs to
a pretty little girl, a tramp finds it at night. Takes it out of
the mud and hangs it around his neck like a medal. I don't know
what happened to it. Froglets used it as a playground or their king
moved into it. Or maybe a rocker took it out and later, if there was
a baby's foot without a shoe, he put it on that… or a willow tree
bent over it and covered it soothingly. Saving it for a little foot that fits…
Károly Lencsés Works III
These works are part of a volume of poetry, The Dead Lover, by Hungarian poet Károly Lencsés and translated by Ágnes Megyeri. A collection of his works have been selected, arranged by Why Vandalism? for this year's publication. * minor edits to original translation: WV?/Ágnes.
Karoly Lencses is a Hungarian poet and visual artist, born in Nyiregyhaza, Hungary, in 1976. He has been writing from a very early age; his first attempts were in primary school, his passion for writing has not faded since. He has numerous publications in most Hungarian literary magazines. He has had two books of poems published, and his poems are included in many anthologies. Recently, he has been granted the Andras Dugonics literary prize, an award granted by the public.