András Gerevich

In the storybook the little prince

always ended up with a little princess

or a seamstress sometimes,

just like Granddad and Granny,

Mum and Dad, Romeo and Juliet.

It was years before I discovered

that sometimes a little prince

fell in love with the coach boy,

or that one of my uncles had never

been seen with a woman.

I wasn’t prepared for my own life.

This is just like Santa Claus -

disappointment woven from delight.  A tale.

And like in hide-and-seek, the strongest

wins, even when he cheats.

 Translated by DH

You’re peeling potatoes by the Bodrog

while I chop wood into a pile,

you lark and chatter on,

the axehead ticks like a clock.

Tits and finches are chirruping

in the thicket. We sit ourselves down

like happy anglers. I want to squeeze

the warm avian body, feel its flutterings.

Like a fish struggling at the end

of a taut extended line

you refuse to surrender

nor will my arms let you go.

We fall upon each other, my mouth

fills with sand, the fire goes out.

I bite upon your nipple as a fish

might seize on a worm.

 Translated by GS

Letting my cocoa drip into the sea

I watched the sweet brown drops dissolve

in the calm, salt, transparent Adriatic,

then vanish in the space of a moment.

‘Today I’ve reached the age,’

my mother said as we finished breakfast,

‘my own mother was the day she died.’

I dived off a cliff into the water.

Last year I too knew the exact day

(I’d worked it out weeks in advance)

I reached the age my father

was when I was born.

It was a boring weekday, Wednesday,

we sipped morning coffee together in bed,

I felt your stubble when I kissed you,

like the prickly realisation inside me

no-one would upend that sandglass again.

Translated by CW.

“I brought you to Florence to see this,”

my father pointed to Botticelli’s Venus.

“That was your dad when we got married,”

my mother said at the statue of David.

But being ten, I just liked to clamber

over towers, ruins, heaps of rock,

chase my way up spiral staircases

and round and round lofty cathedral domes.

“Well,” I thought, “Dad’s totally different,

he’s older, hairier, a little fat.

But when I’m grown, I’ll be like that statue.”

Dad still recalls my mystified response: “For this?”

But whenever I see the David statue,

I still grow embarrassed, like a young boy.

Translated by David Hill

Desire is a cramped, fusty apartment

noisy with the highway traffic;

scents line up before the mirror

but the fridge is empty, the handle sticky.

This is where the cutest guy lives,

the one you never find at home

because he sleeps in other men’s apartments:

rows of alluring snapshots fill the wall.

Stick your own photos up among them,

put his pants on, slip into his bed,

adopt his surname – if you move in,

all you’ll be is part of the furniture.

 Translated by CW

On Sunday we escaped to play in the woods:

We ran, my head humming with birdsong,

Bees and bugs fizzed about my face,

We hid behind shrubs, behind tree trunks

To spy on strangers as they walked by.

The sun shone green through the swaying branches,

We played tag, pretended to be outlaws;

We clambered up rocks: I was harder

Than stone; quicker and slicker than snakes.

But sand got into my shoes, between my teeth.

I was up to my knees in dead leaves,

The mulsh thick with ants, almost heaving

And crackling, as if the skulls of a whole flock

Of dead birds were crushed under the foliage –

I threw myself headlong although I was frightened.

Let darkness cover me, I could feel the damp earth

Beneath it, knew its raw stench. I was cold

And stood up, snow melted on my face and ran

Under my clothes. As it froze to my skin

It compressed me, snow covered me, my body was snow.

Translated by GS

Half drunk at daybreak, stinking of cigarettes

I slipped into the church, exhausted

after a night spent crushing into parties,

to kneel down before Christ amidst the palms.

A teenager, I loved making such lonely

visits to the empty, noiseless church

so as to send a prayer up for true love.

Because I was secretly in love with my

best friend – torn apart, tortured

with longing for the man in him.

But once I’m through the door today

I can get no further than the grating:

in a shrieking car alarm, the words I cannot find

are like sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

Translated by CW

It had chilled down, grown dark, I was waiting

for you after a quarrel: glaring at every tram

in the square, noting how the more people passed

the more they resembled each other: the crowd

was getting on my nerves.I was frozen. If only

I could hold you I thought, I could forget everything.

It no longer mattered that it had started snowing.

Every bone in my body was turning to ice,

so in the end I walked home through the snow

carrying my bags. You had left the butter on

the kitchen table and a half-eaten sandwich by the computer,

your muddy footprints led from the balcony

towards the kitchen. I put some music on

did the laundry and washed up. Before going to bed

I decorated the tree so that should you call at night

you would find everything in order

and quietly creep into the bed beside me.

 Translated by GS

Our bed is rocking like the sea

beneath a ship. Your smell

is as unfamiliar as the harbour

to the tramp steamer.

I cling to you, water to skin.

The cells of my body are shoals

of excited fish and now the funnell

blares and the nets

are broken, the mesh has caught

on a reef. Sailors’ arms

are glimmering in the regular

strobe of reflectors, the beams

of a squeaky, revolving

lighthouse. The gulls are ripping

the kraken to shreds: it chews

and digests its own body.

The ship splits in two,

the decks’ tiny splinters pierce

the entire surface of the skin,

a pool of diesel spreads across the water.

Translated by GS

I keep turning the radiator on and off,

there is still frost at night

though there are flowers already in the garden,

yellow and mauve, I don't know their names.

They are coloured, like thrown-away sweet wrappers,

adverts in telephone boxes,

dressed windows in the shopping centre,

like a Krishna-march passing through hugging males

on Saturday nights in Old Compton Street,

like the traffic light's red, amber and green

running into one another,

when music is booming from the bars

and silence from the bookshops.

Sitting alone with my coffee I gaze and gaze

at the limitless forms of beauty

in male eyes, faces, bodies

and I want to kiss your nipple, your navel,

I want to bury my face in your rich head of hair,

I want to taste the flavour of dinner on your tongue,

although I don't even know

if you care for women or me.

 Translated by PZ

“Sometimes I wake from dreams

and I have no idea what I am,

old or young, boy or girl.

I have to touch myself

to check: the only evidence is

my sweating body in the damp bed.”

Tiresias sat facing me. He’d been

walking his dog , I’d been running.

Both of us slumped on a bench.

“It has long ceased to matter whether

it is light or dark. The inner clock

that knew the time of day has stopped.

It’s years since I lived in the present,

only in prophecies and myths;

I can’t find my way in the street.”

He lit a cigarette and scratched his dog

behind the ear. “András, if I could

talk about it, just this once perhaps…

in my dreams I am always a woman,

wild and desirable, and wholly out of reach,

adored and admired by men.

I play with my breasts in my dreams,

my skin soft and delicate. Light trembles

throughout the entire dream-sequence.”

He scratched his shin with his white stick,

the skin was peeling off his hands, his face,

the dog had found a hedgehog to play with.

“The loveliest time of my life seems

So short, a matter of minutes now.

It was when men still desired me.

He gave a deep sigh, spat and looked away.

“If you enjoy being a man be careful,

you could at anytime turn into a woman.

The line between the two is too narrow.

Perhaps if I become pregnant,

I would still be a woman, a mother.”

Translated by George Szirtes