For Ádám Nádasdy, at 75
What if the sole lamp burns out,
and by morning this splendid palace of darkness
is just a burnt-out factory building?
What if the slender sonnet begins to swell,
and its own inertia
eats away at the paper’s integrity,
and the insatiable material eventually tears?
What if the body finds its way back
to the old footprints, but not the old path?
What if the candy flosser can’t
lift the wand laden with sugared poetry
and it gets caught in the spinning?
If the faulty part slips through
the quality check and the conveyor belt
quickens in its joy?
The heroic, the cathartic: uninteresting.
Getting to the question, to movement, a single sound,
to a profile, to muscle fiber. Shamelessly
chortling with abandon.
Without the least little sign
of repentance or excuses.
We launched this project with the support of the Kult Minor - Fund for the Support of National Minority Culture. Its aim is to translate contemporary Hungarian poetry in Slovakia into English. We want to create a virtual anthology of contemporary Hungarian poetry in Slovakia.