Six Poems by Károly Fellinger, translated by Károly Sándor Pallai

MAGNIFYING

The period during which
God is still able to undo
the creation is an average life
expectancy. As the average
age increases year by year,
it’s all the more obvious that
God becomes slower. If people
were eternal,
creation would
definitely be irrevocable.

MIRE OF THE SKIES

She, who is making her way
out of
the mirror right now,
can only get off
if she can pass undetected,
if I notice her,
she catches her eye
in my blue eyes
and thinks then
that she is my mother
and polishes the mirror
from within
with the foxed sheet
of the birth certificate

ON DEATH AND ETERNAL LIFE

Since the fall into sin,
man is a very reliable
apothecary balance scale
to which God is abnormally
attached.

When God tries the weight
of the world,
he has got all of us in his pocket.

He would like to
peel off his nudity,
but all in vain,
his nakedness is
a veil full of holes.

SONG

Silence is for a lifetime,
just like death.

DURING WRITING
TO GÁBOR ZSILLE

Oblivion
erects bridges
over the boundary river
of past and present.

Jesus knows
that bridges wouldn’t be
able to support him,
he is bound to walk on water.

WHAT REMAINS OF READING

He pulled
his glasses off his nose
as he took his eyes
off the shelf
on which
he put his glasses
back in the spectacle-case.

Only man
is capable of
vanity.