Ferenc András Kovács

Poems

Translated by David Hill

[...]

Byzantine epigram
Bizánci epigramma

Only as long as in the huge hippodrome of religions
Circus performers scamper as if on heaven's
TV screen the smiles of the saints were crazily flashing
And in the seraphic cacophony,
Along with icon-makers and-destroyers,
The dead will make statements also-
Lone coachmen, market women, hymn composers,
Historians and relic sellers in the vacuum of a
Single nimbus could tell whatever lies they want within
The light of a gilded thirst for air, light years away
From their own selves beneath the rule of an experi-
Mental glass bell as if beneath the holy dome of Wisdom they
Mouthed something about freedom's asceticism,
Not words about the moon at dawn but about the poem which
Shines out like Galateia's ivory-coloured bosom
Into the living folk's Cornelian nights-
Only the way it's possible to write, and would
Be possible to live... Only as long as it's
Possible to die for the simple reason that to want to
Live and write is: freedom.

 

Fragmentum
Fragmentum

Be superfluous!

Your face flickers out-poets

don't exist, nor poetry.

Just a single verse

exists-the whole universe

may be one poem's endless

changeability's

dream, and if the silence should

open and the word expand

in the open-space-

phobia of divine beauty -

it will create, grow in time.

Just a single verse

exists... the one you're writing.

But it will remain unknown

to you, forever-

unbound by desire, by law...

Pitiless totality's

counterpart. You can't

even understand what you've

forced on yourself. No mercy.

Just a single verse

exists.

[...]

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András Ferenc Kovács
lives in Marosvásárhely (Tîrgu Mureş), Transylvania. He has published ten volumes of poetry and is one of the editors of the Hungarian literary journal Látó.