Ottilie Mulzet 

Translator

1

On the chest, where they operated,
a picture was tattooed.
An angel descending to its inversed sky,
outside, it was snowing.

Pushing the stone away, the angel
sat by the entrance to the cave.
It sank into the skew-eyed evening
light: good thing there’d been no birth.

Six months after the first operation
they cut open the stomach too. What the
chemo left on the veins, the aorta,
they took out the lymphoma.

It was cold in the operating room. She was freezing.
A needle squirted a dream into her.
She saw a hand for the last time,
fell into a narrow mantle, which was

filled with dense, egg-like light.
The angel waited in the corridor.
Group photographs of doctors on the walls. A nurse
at times clattered across the sick ward.

Hours went by like this. Awakening in intensive care.
Her stomach sliced open to the sternum.
You are beautiful, beautiful, the female likeness of my body,
enveloped in the palm of nothingness.

And the angel leaned above her.
And whispered in her ear:
Adonai, Elohim, Sebaoth.
Come back to the cave-night.

Translated by Ottilie Mulzet

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2

On her chest, where they operated,
a picture was tattooed: blue sky
with an angel turned upwards
and snowflakes beginning to fly.

The angel sat at the mouth of the cave,
a stone was rolled away. Into the skew-eyed
evening it slowly went sinking.
Good thing she was not with child.

Six months after the first operation
her stomach was cut open too.
Lymphoma left in her veins after chemo:
all this they had to do.

It was cold in the operating theatre.
A needle squeezed a dream into her; she froze.
Saw a hand, then the hand was no more,
and fell into a mantle, soft as a rose

filled with light; the most delicate light.
All this time, the angel waited in the corridor.
Group photos of doctors on the walls,
nurses clattering across the sick ward floor.

Awoke in intensive care after hours of this,
her stomach entirely split open like a pod
enveloped in the palm of emptiness.
Beautiful, beautiful female likeness of my body.

Then came the angel, whispering in her ear
Adonai, Elohim, Sabaoth; from a height
leaned over her, repeating:
Come back to the cave of the night.

Translated by Denis Hirson

Beyond the Cordones

There were corners, blockaded squares, where, for days after the routed
demonstration, the biting smell of teargas was palpable. If the burnt-out
car wrecks and the ripped-up cobblestones had all been removed, still, the missing
pavement let no one forget: the city centre was now a zone
of uncertainty. Evening belonged to the sirens, arsonists’ chants,
the squares were traps, the streets borders, trajectories of escape that could be shut down
in a commander’s head: after so many years of peace, finally able to wage war.

*

No matter where one turned, there were bars, cordons. The buildings’
stoic grey arrived from a distance farther than moonlight. The city still
spoke of the new wrath in the dead language of ornamental statuary: Poseidon
is the chief god here, in the continent’s centre, where in narrow rented rooms people bargain
for stolen love. The naked stone bodies turned towards each other,
like computer screens forgetfully left on: the thick poppyseed of visual static
sprinkled onto them, as down below, far from every sea, wrath gathered up the legions of children.

*

You write the story of your body with two hands that do not know each other,
two voices summon the unknown within you. Gather up the distinctions. Place the
blossoming bouquet of lies, explanations and objections onto
your grave now, tend your grave, clear away the beliefs falling onto it
like autumn foliage. But do not look at the everyday with everyday eyes.
The simplest questions are always the ones you don’t ask, and if
they scream into your ear, ignore them until you have run out of time.

*

In times of peace, the city centre covers its self-hatred with decorative flagstones,
flower-boxes, and ordered transportation; the decommissioned streetcars,
carrying the scent of humans from the most frightening peripheral districts,
are taken to its terminal caverns. Life here was never anything else
than the art of the too-slow massacre. Going along the cordons, now at last
the alert mind can play with its dreams of public hangings, schizophrenic love
and the like, and believe, intoxicated, that it is engaged in politics.

*

At times it is necessary to go to war. After all, deep within, relations were never
peaceful. A single person is too narrow a space for so many wants and desires. He who
has no eyes and ears, always cheerful in others’ presence, with the eyes
an owl, a millstone hanging from round his neck as he walks around, who, for simplicity’s
sake, calls himself “I”. None of them inhabit this world at all. All of them
betray themselves. Their state is emergency, but all the same, they are
capable of delighting in their own defeat. The one speaking here decrees
   against them in vain.

*

But what is in fact my problem? Someone born on the same day as me,
who’s known me for at least twenty years, asked: Closing time? Hopelessness? Boredom?
And looked at me, as if explanations would mean something. In exchange, I told a story
about a grey heron. I saw it in a city by the sea; it stood every morning
on the roof of a red Peugeot in the parking lot, and waited for fish to be thrown
from the upper floor of the house opposite. Every morning, the selfsame, unlikely
presence. Take this heron as a comparison, I said. For whatever you want.

*

If one day you leave here, don’t throw a single coin over your shoulder! Grow the ice
within yourself, as if sitting with closed eyes on the other side of the moon; practice
the art of slow murder. You were never anything else but the astronaut
of your feelings. Your spaceship is a piece of blank paper. Do not pity those below
displaying their scars after battle, and, because they cannot conquer hardship, dream
of Sundays fragrant with food. Take nothing from here, and do not believe the rivers,
the oceans! From here, you can escape only upwards. It is not worthwhile to recollect upon
   the Earth.

Translated by Ottilie Mulzet

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Beyond the Cordoned Zones

There were corners, enclosed spaces where, for days after the demonstration had been dispersed, you could smell the biting tang of teargas. The blackened ruins of cars might have been removed like the ripped up flagstones, but still there were no pavements, and no one could forget that the city centre had become a zone of uncertainty. Sirens and chanting arsonists took possession of the evening. In the mind of a military commander, at last engaged in warfare after too many years of peace, the squares turned into traps; the streets were frontiers, escape-routes that could be irrevocably sealed off.

*
No matter where one turned, there were iron barriers and cordoned zones. From a distance even further than moonlight the stoical greyness of the houses drew closer. The city spoke of this fresh wrath in the dead language of ornamental statuary: Poseidon is the great god here, at the heart of the continent, where in narrow rented rooms people bargain for stolen love. Like TV screens distractedly left on, naked stone bodies turned towards each other, thickly sprinkled with the poppy seed of static. Meanwhile, down in the street, rage frothed among legions worse than children, far from any sea.

*
Two hands which know nothing of each other write the story of your body, two voices summon from within you that which is not known. Glean all distinctions between them. Lay the bouquet of lies, explanations and objections on your gravestone, sweep away the certainties that fall there like autumn leaves. But do not look upon the everyday with everyday eyes. The most elemental questions are always those you do not ask, and if they come screaming into your ear, do not even listen until you have run beyond the limits of time.

*
With ornamental flagstones, flowerpots and well-ordered public transport, the city centre covers over its self-hatred in times of peace; decommissioned streetcars, bearing the odour of humans from the frightening outer districts, are directed to terminal caverns. Life here was never anything but the art of a slow-motion massacre. Following the cordoned zones, the alert mind can imagine public hangings and schizophrenic love, entering the dream that such wishful action might itself be politics.

*

Sometimes it is necessary to wage a war. After all, the deepest of human relations have never been peaceful. Any single person is far too narrow for so many wants and desires. He who possesses no eyes or ears, who always brightens in the presence of others; he with the owl-eyes, a millstone around his neck as he walks, calling himself “I” for the sake of simplicity: not one of them inhabits this world. All betray themselves. Their state is emergency, though they are nonetheless capable of delighting in their defeat. In vain does this poet pronounce decrees against them.

*
As a matter of fact, what is my problem? Someone born on the same day I was, and who has known me for twenty years or more, asks me: Is this all because it is closing time? Hopelessness Boredom? And looks at me, as if there were some true explanation. In exchange, I tell a story about a grey heron. I once saw it in a city by the sea, in a parking lot, standing on the roof of a red Peugeot. It was waiting for fish to be thrown down from the upper floor of a house. Every morning the same improbable presence, out in the sunlight. Take this heron, I said. And compare it with whatever you wish.

*
If ever you leave here one day, throw no coin over your shoulder. Imagine, with closed eyes, sitting on the far side of the moon, your insides iced up, and practice the art of slow murder. Surely you have always been the astronaut of your feelings, your spaceship a sheet of blank paper. Do not pity those below who display their scars when battle is done, dreaming of Sundays fragrant with food because they cannot conquer hardship. Take nothing from here. Do not believe the rivers, the oceans! From here, the only escape is upwards! Remembering is of no worth here upon the earth.

Translated by Denis Hirson

Is it possible to travel against a city? To return, having decided in advance: this time I cannot allow it to burst open my foreignness, to shame me with that too direct gaze, as if knowing everything about me, confusing my instincts and desires. Is it possible to oppose repetition, a city with a woman’s gaze?

For there are gazes which, though led by curiosity, not mistaken for touch, still bring the body to fever, hitting upon the soul’s Achilles’ heel. Gazes that do not want time for themselves, but disturb and shatter with their memories. These gazes have no gender. They have it, and they don’t. The gazes of women, too free; sharp, dissolving all resistance.

And if the moments split open, like iridescent bubbles blown in all directions behind the ochre yellow wired glass, why does something hover there in place of voice and countenance? Something which, luckily, cannot be shown with a camera. Something which can only be forgotten — no longer a voice, or a face. It is forbidden to think upon it, even to ask whose face it was. No one’s.

Without a sound, navigation lights blinking, an airliner, illuminated, ascends. Flight as narcosis, the clouds as the desert, the desert as the ocean, the ocean as the snow-covered plains. The body denuded by time, the eye rests, the runway everywhere a uniform grey. I lean back, acceleration forcing me into the seat. Preparation can never be completed. Gratitude for the dignified ascent.

Still, what gives rise to the need for repetition? Repetition of speech, silence’s most rigorous form. Why is denial of complicity with that nothing which remains in place of covered, buried passion, not enough? And why does this all seem like retreat, as if I were sleeping in a conch-shell, burying myself alive? Though there is nothing, nothing in passion that can be termed as fate.

And if there were fate, who would not wish to evade it? Or is not life itself the evasion of fate? Of fate, so easy to imagine into gazes, ornamenting them, clothing them with desire. Fate is the emptiness of heaven within us, which if released, its delirium opening but for a single moment, burns to ashes, annihilating all. Demented emptiness. Is it possible not to fall in love with fate?

Corridors lit by fluorescent lights, a row of closed doors. As if gigantic blocks of ice were behind them, cooling the city from below. Then stairs, elevators, lifting devices. Bundles arriving on conveyor belts, innocently continuing their journey, no constraint. Like the ice-blocks of the North Pole, breaking off. A wind arises from somewhere, a transparent automatic door shatters into pieces.

A city approaches. Repetition is neither the plaything of time nor one of its deceptions, luring us into its mirror-covered chambers: showing one thousand faces, it takes that one face as well. Repetition is the eye of time, which gazes, instead of us, into one thousand mirrors, the emptiness of heaven within. Repetition is the eye that sees the beginning, hindering the plunge, as if grabbing the collar of a too-daring child.

And suddenly, the dread of space passes. Behind the opening sliding doors the gleam of enamel, wind-barriers, glass walls. Directions, broad and open. Air at last. Distance, which must be travelled alone, giving way to deeper passions. And yet so simple, like an etude. Ambling along the keyboard, with large pauses for breath. Finally, there is awakening. To awaken next to my beloved.

But until then I must persist in this foreignness, so that the pauses for breath may slowly lengthen, becoming crevices, then chasms in the city’s body, along which I run along my route. Each building no more than two distant voices tensing the silence like a chord, makes it sound. This is return, but not into known distress. A return to a living face, to a beginning always approaching from somewhere else.

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

I.

The loudspeaker calls out our names
and we jump up. Our names are
misspelled and mispronounced,
but we smile graciously.
We take the soap from the hotel,
and arrive too early at the station.
With heavy suitcases, in baggy trousers,
everywhere one of our compatriots loitering.
The trains go with us in the wrong directions,
and if we pay, the small change rolls everywhere.
At our borders we’re afraid, and beyond that
we get lost, but recognize each other.
We know the other side of the world,
the sweat-drenched clothes beneath the coat.
Below us stands the escalator, the handle
of the shopping bag filled to bursting rips, and when
we leave, the alarm goes off.
Beneath our skin, like a radiating jewel,
is the microchip of a guilty conscience.

II.

I know where you live, I know that city well.
I know that black rainfall.
Your mother used to sunbathe on the roof,
in the summer you swam in the quarry lake.
I know that man, his legs amputated,
who lives in the entranceway.
I know that country, I know
its trains, its cries, its chlorine heavens,
its acid rains, its lingering snowfalls,
its pale overly-swaddled infants.
I know where you live. No matter where it is,
if you happen to think of home, the road bordered
with the stumps of acacia trees
haunts you in your dreams.
During the feast, when they drag in
the tree, like a dead man, too heavy, grabbing at the foot,
you stop and look, as it is cast out to the others.
I know what you see: the disheveled heap of human bodies,
on every one of their extended yellow hands
a forgotten jewel: plundered
blue and gold Christmas-candy wrappers.

III.

My name is Alina Moldova.
I come from Eastern Europe,
I am 170 centimeters in height,
my life expectancy is 56 years.
I have amalgam fillings in my teeth,
in my heart I carry an inherited dread.
When I speak English, no one understands me,
when I speak French, no one understands me,
It is only the language of fear
that I speak without an accent.
My name is Alina Moldova.
My heart valves are an unmanned rail-crossing,
poisons circulate within my veins,
my life expectancy is 56 years.
I support my ten-year-old son,
I get hold of some flour, step onto moving trains.
You can hit me, you can shake me,
but my earring only jangles a little,
like a loosened part
in a motor still running.