Not there, on the tight bend of the paved highway,
where cars are occasionally prone to skidding,
chiefly in winter, though no one dies there,
not there where streets are greener and leafier
where lawns are mowed and there’s a dog in the garden
and the head of the family gets home late at night,
nor there in front of the school where every morning
a man is waiting regular as clockwork,
nor inside the gates on the concrete playground,
nor in the neglected, dehydrated meadow
where a discarded dog-end hits the ground and glows
for a moment, it doesn’t begin there
but at the edge of the forest, in rotting humus
where somebody once was buried alive,
that’s where the poem begins.
*
Song of the Secret Life
My secret life is that of a cat sneaking between parked cars,
a shadow on a wall, a memory, its hem ripped apart,
My secret life is lived at the edge of your widening cornea, discreetly,
close the lids of your scratched eyes on me, close them completely,
My secret life is an echoing empty room in my head
where I leant from the window once and sang of blackness and dread.
My secret life is a ramshackle pigeon-loft stinking of shit,
a pale frock in the sky into which death will eventually fit.
My secret life is a deep crack that runs down a living face,
a path under time where I no longer rage, a singular place.
My secret life is a station where a train thunders through it and then
nothing but silence, pitch darkness, while I count to ten.
My secret life consists of moments quickly scanned in,
a crumpled page from a lost notebook found in the bin
My secret life is a lacking, an utter mystery, a puzzle undone,
so you have to read all my fading faces as if they were one.
My secret life is landfill, yellow and overflowing,
the lusts of the body in movement, time spent coming and going.
My secret life is kept secret on purpose with doors I always lock,
where dreams come at dawn with their knuckles and loudly knock.
My secret life is this thing you see passing, you catch it neatly,
close the lids of your scratched eyes on me, close them completely,
My secret life is one I’ve invented, to survive it needs telling,
its lightbulbs burn in the house, in that far distant dwelling.
*
East European Triptych
I
We spring to our feet when they call our names
on the loudspeaker. Our names
are misspelt and mispronounced,
but we smile enthusiastically.
We’re carrying soap from hotels,
we leave too early for the station.
Our fellow nationals are all over the place
with heavy cases, wearing baggy trousers.
We get on the wrong trains, and if we pay,
our loose change simply rolls away.
We are scared even at our own border
and are lost once past it, but we recognise
each other. Even on the far side of the world
we know each other by our sweat drenched clothes.
The moving stairs stop under us, our full
shopping bags break off at the handles and when
we leave, the alarm siren goes off.
Under our skins, like a precious jewel,
glows the microchip of guilt.
II
I know where you live. I’m familiar with the city.
I’m familiar too with the black rain.
Your mother would lie and sunbathe on the roof,
in summer you’d swim in the gravel pit.
I remember people who’d lost their legs
who made their home in shelters in doorways.
I’m familiar with the country, I have known
its trains, its weeping, its chlorine-coloured sky,
its acid rain, its long slow fall of snow,
its overdressed, pale babies.
I know where you live but whatever you do,
whenever you think of home, your dreams
are full of avenues lined by stunted acacias.
After Christmas when others are dragging the tree
by its feet like an overweight corpse,
you stop and watch them dumping it with the rest.
I know what you see. A tangled pile of human bodies
their yellow arms extended, wearing forgotten
blue and gold sweet wrappers like stolen jewellery.
III
My name is Alina Moldova.
I come from East Europe,
I am 170 centimetres tall,
my life expectancy is 56 years.
My mouth is full of amalgam fillings,
my heart full of inherited anxieties.
No one understands when I speak English
nor when I try to speak French,
the only language I speak without accent
is the language of fear.
My name is Alina Moldova,
my heart valve is an unmanned level crossing,
my veins are full of circulating poisons,
my life expectancy is 56 years.
I can manage my ten-year-old boy,
I find some flour, I leap on a moving train.
You can hit me, you can shake me about,
only my earrings will rattle
like a long-defunct component
in an engine that’s still running.
Contents List
11 Introduction by George Szirtes
21 East European Triptych [SP]
24 Sleeper [V]
26 River of Sounds [V]
29 Lover’s Dream [ML]
31 Tyrannosaurus Rex [V]
33 Tourist [V]
37 Send Me a Smile [P]
39 Dog [V]
41 Barrier [V]
42 New Year’s Eve [P]
43 Folder [P]
44 Ode to Men of Fifty [P]
45 Gumtree [B]
47 Where [B]
48 Valley Road [B]
50 Song of the Secret Life [V]
52 Universal Adaptor [V]
55 Time, time, time [V]
57 How Are You All? [V]
58 Duration [V]
60 Camera [V]
61 Twenty Lines with a Cat [B]
62 Hourglass [V]
63 Sunday [V]
65 Fig Tree [V]
66 Cold Weather [V]
67 Homeward [U]
68 Dodo [U]
70 Oven Glove [U]
72 Any Country in the World [V]
74 The Student [V]
76 Rainy Summer [V]
This book presents a selection of her poems made by Krisztina Tóth for George Szirtes to translate, taken from five collections published by Magvető Kiadó in Budapest: Porhó (Dust, 2001), Síró ponyva (Weeping awning, 2004), Magas labda (High ball, 2009), Világadapter (Universal adaptor, 2016) and Bálnadal (Whalesong, 2021). The poems ‘Homeward’, ‘Dodó’ and ‘Oven Glove’ are previously unpublished in Hungarian in book form. In the contents list the initials [P], SP], [V], [ML] and [B] – or [U] for uncollected – indicate which of these collections each poem comes from.
