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Six Poems by Károly Fellinger, translated by Károly Sándor Pallai

Károly Fellinger and Károly Pallai

Karoly Fellinger Pallai
Photo credit: Jenő Görföl / WikipediaCC BY-SA 3.0

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.

Translated from Hungarian by Károly Sándor Pallai
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Károly Fellinger

Károly Fellinger was born in 1963, in Bratislava. He used to work as an agronomist, now he runs his own smallholding. He has published 18 books in Hungarian so far (collections of poems, a village monograph, tales). His volumes of poetry have been published in 8 languages so far.

Károly Pallai

Károly Pallai is a a historian of literature, poet, translator and editor, and founder of the electronic literary review Vents Alizés. He holds a PhD in Contemporary Francophone Literatures and has published several collections of poems and a play.

He is the author of academic works on the contemporary literature of Oceania and the Indian Ocean published by the University Press Pécs (Subjectivités seychelloises, Mosaïque des océans, >Microlectures polynésiennes). He is the first Hungarian translator of several languages (Seychelles, Mauritius, Haitian and Guadeloupean Creole, Papiamento, Sranan, Sarnami, Saramaccan and Aukan). He has received several awards and prizes in acknowledgement of his work as a historian of literature, translator and poet.

Author: Károly Fellinger and Károly Pallai Tags: Károly Sándor Pallai, poetry, translations Category: Poetry February 3, 2017

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Empty Mirror

Established in 2000 and edited by Denise Enck, Empty Mirror is an online literary magazine that publishes new work each Friday.

Each week EM features several poems each by one or two poets; reviews; critical essays; visual art; and personal essays.

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