Mária Ferenčuhová
Translated by James Sutherland-Smith
STARFISH
1
While I’m packing again
you learn my itinerary by heart
and connect the points on the map.
Yellowish cigarette butts
moisten between the blades of grass,
ladybirds, sloe bugs and winged ants
that attack from the back
and land in your hair.
You leave with a hoe
going to dig into the earth, thinking
that you lead a life deeper than mine.
Each departure is definitive,
each arrival is a new beginning.
Vainly do you impress in your head
railway routes,
etch a starfish in your brain,
you won’t find me
although I haven’t gone away
from you.
2
I travel with Magda.
I imagine a clean,
fragrant dresser.
Flowering cherry.
Duvets. In a basket, bread.
Above Magda unmoving,
icily limpid eyes
and on the sheet a hair:
in an overexposed, distorted memory,
once they would be silhouettes equally fragile
as our present limbs upholstered with cracked
skin, as if we banged
our backs painfully in an open carriage
and overhead the last rockets
shimmer for us, which will soon fall
to the wounded earth.
3
Finally home.
The first person you meet,
is wearing a Sunday suit of your father’s.
The door’s open,
faces not.
Where have you been living? Nothing’s changed.
And yet the Four Towns, your home,
smelt otherwise.
Restoring furniture and repainting the walls
is not sufficient. Washed quilts, bleached tablecloths,
everything impure ironed out except you,
except for the
wrinkle above your nose.
4
A hilly landscape
devastated by industry,
coughs up bloody mucus, with a yellowish-gray
beard, smoker, that from the world
desperately hides mining towns
with reservoirs like drops of dew
in the leaves of Lady’s Mantle.
On the plain only the aquapark gleams
and abandoned cotton factories,
blind dusty windows,
not even children playing in their ruins.
The light brown Vah poured out.
On its waves broken branches,
gaudily white swans.
Here, in this little town my great-
grandfather once owned a pub and a cinema.
He drank them up before they were taken from him.
A second-class station.
Our train doesn’t stop here.
5
The last dead factory.
Masonry has long since given in.
Greenery grows out of it.
Insects have undermined foundations,
surviving in the cracks
and feeding birdlife.
Only now
is the rough construction
truly done.
HVIEZDICA
1
Kým sa znova balím,
učíš sa spamäti môj itinerár
a spájaš body na mape.
Medzi steblami trávy, lienkami,
bzdochami a krídlatými mravcami,
ktoré útočia od chrbta a pristávajú
vo vlasoch, vlhnú
žltkasté ohorky z cigariet.
Odchádzaš, motykou
ideš ryť do zeme, myslíš si,
že vedieš hlbší život ako ja.
Každý odchod je definitívy,
každý príchod je novým začiatkom.
Darmo si vštepuješ do hlavy
železnične trasy,
vrývaš si hviezdicu do mozgu,
nenájdeš ma,
hoci som od teba
neodišla.
2
Cestujem s Magdou.
Predstavím si čistý,
voňavý bielizník.
Kvitnúcu čerešňu.
Periny. V košíku pečivo.
Nad Magdou nehybné,
ľadovo priezračné oči
a na prestieradle vlas:
v preexponovanej, skreslenej spomienke,
raz budú siluety rovnako krehké
ako naše dnešné údy potiahnuté popraskou
kožou, keď do seba bolestivo
narážame bedrami v otvorenom vagóné
a nad hlavami sa nám trbliecu posledné
rakety, ktoré čoskoro dopadnú
na poranenú zem.
3
Konečne doma.
Prvý človek, ktorého stretneš,
má na sebe nedeľný oblek tvojho otca.
Dvere sú otvorené,
tváre nie.
Kde si to bývala?Nič sa nezmenilo.
a predsa Štvormestie, tvoj domov,
voňalo inak.
Prestavať nábytok a premaľovať steny
nestačí. Vyprali periny, vybielili obrusy,
vyhladili všetko okrem teba,
okrem tej tvojej
vrásky nad nosom.
4
Kopcovitá krajina
spustošená priemyslom,
opľutá krvavými hlienmi, so žltosivou
bradou, fajčiarka, čo pred svetom
zúfalo ukrýva banské mestá
s tajchami ako kvapkami rosy
na listoch alchemilky.
Na rovine sa skvie len akvapark
a opustené bavlnárske závody,
slepé zaprášené okná,
už ani deti sa nehrávajú v ich ruinách.
Vyliaty svetlonedý Váh.
Na vlnách zlámané kmene,
krikľavo biele labute.
Tu, v tomto mestečku môj prastarý
otec kedysi vlastnil hostinec a kino.
Prepil ich skôr, než mu ich zobrali.
Stanica druhej triedy.
Náš vlak tu nestojí.
5
Posledná mŕtva továreň.
Murivo sa už dávno vzdalo.
Vyrastá z neho náletová zeleň.
Hmyz podryl základy,
prežíva v štrbinách
a živí vtáctvo.
Až teraz
je hrubá stavba
naozaj hotová.
SOMETHING COULD HAVE HAPPENED
Sometime around July the ninth
I stopped distinguishing what was real …
I told them that I didn‘t know what had happened.
That something could’ve happened that I don‘t remember.
Incidentally, what I remember is dull.
Scraps of quite ordinary things:
dog hair, muddy water,
time knotted.
When they pushed back the cupboard, I saw
the door behind it: it didn’t fit,
it was metal and warped below.
Then I realized that the photos
glued to the bottom of a drawer
I hadn‘t put there.
Neither was the manuscript probably mine.
I saw that behind the door
was another staircase and another door,
behind which lived those,
whom I’d encountered
in the cellar.
When I turned round,
men in uniform no longer stood
in the dark apartment, she stood there,
as though she had always been there, the whole time.
Had I done something wrong?
Had they done something wrong to me?
At the end of the corridor the mirror swung out
seven times.
NIEČO SA MOHLO STAŤ
Niekedy okolo deviateho júla
som prestala rozoznávať, čo je skutočnosť.
Povedala som im, že neviem, čo sa stalo.
Že sa mohlo stať niečo, čo si nepamätám.
Veď aj to, čo si pamätám, je matné.
Útržky obyčajných vecí:
srsť psa, kalná voda,
zauzlený čas.
Keď odtlačili skriňu, videla som
za ňou dvere, nedoliehali,
boli plechové a dolu pokrivené.
Vtedy som pochopila, že fotky
nalepené na dne šuflíka
som tam nevložila ja.
Ani rukopis asi nebol môj.
Videla som, že za dverami
je ďalšie schodisko a ďalšie dvere,
za nimi bývali tí,
ktorých som stretávala
v pivnici.
Keď som sa obrátila,
v tmavom byte už nestáli muži
v uniformách, stála tam ona,
akoby tam bola vždy, celý ten čas.
Urobila som niečo zlé?
Urobili mi niečo zlé?
Na konci chodby sedemkrát odvislo
zrkadlo.
Mária Ferenčuhová was born in Bratislava in 1975 and is a poet, translator from French and film theorist. She has published four collections of poetry and a study of documentary film. A selection of her poems translated into English, Tidal Events, was published in March 2018 by Shearsman Books.
James Sutherland-Smith was born in Scotland, but lives in Slovakia. He has published seven collections of his own poetry, the most recent being The River and the Black Cat, published by Shearsman Books in 2018. He also translates poetry from Slovak and Serbian for which he has received the Slovak Hviezdoslav Prize and the Serbian Zlatko Krasní Prize.