After a mause

In a book by a long-dead poet,
by the poem in which he fixes a woman
long-dead, is a flowerhead of mud
pressed flat; the foot-stamp of my cat.

Forever sniffing round, she was
transfixed by lurking-space between the pages,
and froze there, once, for the out-race of a mouse
(and now my cat, my pet, is long-gone, too).

And true enough, in the spine-dark deep
of the paper hidey-holes there’s something trapped:
we’re forever slipping this or that between the sheets
to keep a hold on all, our every accident.

Translated by Antony Dunn

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Translation 2

The Mouse

                 For Zsuzsa Beney

In the book of the poet who lives no more,
next to a verse where he writes of a woman,
(she too lives no more) like a marigold
is preserved the pawprint of my cat:
stealthily creeping there, for the crack
between the pages was always exciting,
waiting for the mouse at once to come out,
(the cat too has long since gone missing)
and truly there in the depths of the paper’s secret
tunnel, something flutters, incessant:
something we have left between the leaves
the accidental there impressed.

Translated by Ottilie Mulzet