Two Poems by Mária Ferenčuhová, Translated by James Sutherland-Smith
PN Review 239, January - February 2018
Connection
She woke up connected
to a lit fibre,
penetrating her head
at the highest point on the crown,
purifying inside,
flushing out sludge,
destroying pathogens
and repairing tissues.
It spread through her fingertips.
She changed plastic to gold,
at sight ennobled
the people, society,
various races.
News of her power
spread by the ether
almost by itself,
she healed at a distance, but also
by touch,
each according to choice,
she saw how the filth gradually
leaves bodies
enters the earth,
warms it.
They discovered her after years
burnt to ash
in a house of which only
the outer walls stand today.
Below them huge reserves
of fossil fuels
are rumoured
to be hidden still.
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Heroes
1.
Insufficiency of sleep, surfeit of meanings,
on the fenders grime. Dust.
A firework display of puddles and clay,
glowing wheels,
a dark head behind the steering wheel,
golden in the child seat.
Uncertainly they leave the family network,
they bear away everything of consequence,
everything, from which for years
you spun your own tale,
although you always craved for something else.
2.
Like strings you draw your vocal cords from your throat.
You unpick your cheeks, from under your hair you pluck
your cranial cap, tighten the skin like a tent
all over the gutted apartment.
You cover it up, with your vocal cords you darn
and put yourself into a single tone,
in which weeping is not heard
and finally sleep can germinate in it.
3.
Implosion.
A face from which protrudes only cheekbone and nose.
An angled back bending under beams:
What burden do you carry again on your shoulders?
The horizon consists of outstretched hands.
By legs empty buckets
and foreign children.
They assemble a mosaic
from shattered make-up.
4.
A single impulse suffices. A photon
strikes steel.
The tale turns on its heel.
I’m sorry, but it scoffs at heroes.
These poems by Mária Ferenčuhová, translated by James Sutherland-Smith, are taken from PN Review 239, January - February 2018. The third poem in this issue is available to paying subscribers, as well as more poetry, features, reviews and reports from across the back catalogue.
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