Back
Everything seems ok.
Rabbis study in the Lublin yeshiva again
even if the Jewish Quarter
is still razed to the ground.
Trains leave just about on time.
We can rely on tannoys or taxis turning up
and underground passages cave
in only once every hundred years.
The smelly couchette only slightly gave me the boke
and looking at the wizened
hulking sleeping cars with curtains
I’m even happy.
I sit opposite a Girl Scout
in a nylon skirt. A steam iron
has left its footprint of fine dots
clearly on her haunch.
Dozing off, I can’t make out
whether sometimes just behind my back
a bulging bottom has plonked down on the bench
or the train at long last has begun to move.
The only thing that gets to me
is the storks that really nest on chimneys
or on tall poles
exactly as in fairy tales.
translation from the Slovak by David Kinloch
SPÄŤ
Všetko sa zdá byť v poriadku.
V lublinskej ješive opäť študujú rabíni,
hoci židovskú štvrť
nechali zrovnanú so zemou.
Vlaky chodia viac-menj načas.
Dá sa spoliehať na hlásenia i na príchody taxikov
a podzemné chodby
sa rúcajú len raz za sto rokov.
Už mi takmer nevadia smradĺavé kupé
a pri pohĺade na pradávne
mohutné lôžkové vozne so záclonkami
sa dokonca poteším.
Usadím sa oproti skautke
v umelinovej sukni. No boku sa jej
črtá pečať naparovacej žehličky, vidno hrot
i zreteĺne vykreslené bodky.
V polospánku už neviem rozlišiť,
či niekedy za mojím chrbtom práve
dosadá na lavicu obrovský zadok,
alebo sa vlak začal konečne rozbiehať.
Prekvapí ma iba to,
že bociany skutočne hniezdia na komínoch
alebo na vysokých stľpoch,
presne ako v rozprávkach.
by Mária Ferenčuhová
About this poem
This translation was made during the SPL workshop with three poets from Slovakia and three from Scotland, under the auspices of the Edwin Morgan Trust, in May 2015.
Mária Ferenčuhová, born in Bratislava in 1975, is a poet, translator and film theorist. She studied dramaturgy and screenwriting at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava and linguistics at the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris. She has published three collections of poetry, Skryté titulky (Closed Caption , 2003), Princíp neistoty (The Uncertainty Principle, 2008), Ohrozený druh (Endangered Species,2012) and a study of documentary film Odložený čas (Delay time , 2009). She is editor of the film magazine KINO-ICON, translates from French, lectures at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava and the Academy of Arts in Banská Bystrica, and lives in Bratislava.
