Have I now seen the One who sees me?
To forbid is twofold:
of neither the other, nor yourself
can you catch a glimpse.
The other, in any case, vanishes
under the glance
in the steaming, seething fog,
or you dissolve in the fragile
yellow, when sight couples with
the mirror image.
Look from behind the eyelids as the other
flows through you. While barely perceptibly
you hold their hand, your hand. Look, as you would look
on yourself. Barely visible from a flower’s perspective.
Just don’t look into the clear-watered one, just don’t look back.
But the aesthetic’s desire, the spectacle’s perversion
glances back again and again. It opens its eyes
whether it wants to or not,
imagines itself a flower, the other a nothing.
We launched this project as part of the Bázis website with the support of the Minority Culture Fund. Its aim is to translate contemporary Hungarian poetry in Slovakia into Slovak and English. We want to create a virtual anthology of contemporary Hungarian poetry in Slovakia.