Season of Empty Tastes / Életünk napjai

I’m eating powdered milk and thinking about my mother.
A quiet, weekend morning, you’re still sleeping,
I’m walking around. On the other side of the window,
there’s a white wall, from here it looks like fog.
I’m planning scrambled eggs, I’m good at that.
I look for my lighter, cigarettes,
while eating powdered milk—I like powdered milk.
Would it taste better if I used olive oil? It doesn’t matter.
I step onto the balcony, drinking my coffee black,
all routine, like winter itself.
The salt, the oil wait for me,
but when I look up, I see that the wall did become fog,
and behind it is the forest from last night’s picture,
the one you stared at a long time, cutting our fight short,
practically in place of an answer—
I didn’t understand, see, just stood behind you, watched.
The concrete below my feet is cold.
There was a lost animal on the picture, in the milk fog,
and I hope that, like my mother, I’ll someday forget this, too. But right now,
the forest is in front of the balcony, last night’s picture just developing.
Coffee and ripped pages in my mouth,
my cigarette almost done, I’m about to make breakfast,
I love you, but this isn’t a love poem.
This is fresh bread, onions, oil, eggs, order.
I’ve dreamt this once before, but no,
I don’t remember what happens from here. Somebody whispers
in your ear that there’s a problem.
This is winter, the season of empty tastes,
of fog, to be precise, of where, where’s my heart.

Before Sleep / Elalvás előtt

It doesn’t matter what fills you, your palms what breasts,
what depth, what deep breath,
it doesn’t matter what you’re silent about
or who you talk to in your sleep, they don’t hear it;

calm down, and as if you were waiting for something
important, wait for morning,
turn to the wall, imagine
you’re sleeping, like the pictures burnt into the film

you forgot about—anyway— beach, smiles,
forest wind, forest.

I Want to be, but No / Szeretnék lenni, de nem

All you can see in this picture are your eyes and the sheet
I was wrapped in too, incidentally naked,
once. When we ran into each other at a bar
a few days ago, this picture was in my head
the whole time—you politely asked
what’s new with you, or some other
moderately uninteresting question.
I didn’t respond. On the way home, I realized
nothing. What could I have said? I want to be
a sentimental cliché in your mouth?
The sky is brightening. If I had a TV, I’d turn it on
right now. Or off. The room’s white, empty walls
are just about to turn blue.
Like having a blonde piece of hair stuck
in my mouth I can’t remove,
this is all I can think about. That you can realize
nothing. And you can stand, dizzy and silent. Or sit
alone on a couch at 5:43 in the morning,
wrapped in another sheet,
contemplating clichés in silence,
like someone who’s just woken up
to realize he’s actually a 57-year-old, deaf,
Polynesian pearl diver who’s in love with a photograph,
and that someone else should breathe for him,
because above him there’s thirty feet.

Thinking of Himself / Magára gondol

He just wants the freeway now, the empty
midnight road, the vast horizon, the fear of heights
when he looks up, just this year of aimless desires,
the dead streets’ 100-degree concrete, just the empty
glass on the table and the spilled milk beside it,
the days turned to white nights, just
the hand hanging off the disheveled bed mid-sleep,
the dead lighters kept as reminders,
just her sleepy glances, clothes strewn on the floor,
just as empty as the ones in the bag, still;
just that deserted basketball court at night, bankrupt
shops’ storefronts, the weight of dark, empty apartments,
just the feeling that, like the sky, he’s not actually
good for anything; a dried-out pool below a trampoline,
a few thrown-out lip glosses, bracelets, empty perfume bottles,
their smell, the smell of everything, just how you have to invent new ways
to say it hurts, or else no one will care – – –
the bottles you can’t recycle, the balloons,
the burnt-out lightbulbs, the empty condoms, the blank screens,
a park at dawn, just some kind of taste, like upon waking.
Just like someone drowning, his lungs full of salt water,
the surface, the never-ending, indifferent emptiness, to grab onto that.

Open-Air / Szabadtér

We talk in English, even though Katharine is German,
but I don’t speak German—most of my family
speaks it, and I wanted to be irreplaceable,
so I started learning English,
that’s how the rest of them became irreplaceable.
It’s going pretty well, though better for Katharine.
After three drinks, she invites me to go on a trip with her south,
to go without thinking, like her.
I could say anything right now,
and she would take it seriously.
I say, let’s keep drinking, I’ll pay.
She tells me about the trees
in the nearby park, points to them,
identifies them—she knows what she’s talking about,
she’s a biologist. She says this all in English,
gives new names to the trees,
smiles. I identify my feelings,
I should invent new names for them,
it’s been too long since I’ve felt someone’s touch.
After the fifth drink, she invites me to Germany,
tells me to move in with her, forget everything here.
I grasp for an excuse, there’s not much keeping me here
but my mother tongue: I’m afraid of losing it.
I smile. I ask if she wants to sleep at my place.
Meanwhile, I’m not thinking about tongues, but a mouth,
no, not yours. No, no.

The Theory of Sinking / A merülés elmélete

Mom, they named the dark spots on the moon seas.
Of course, these are just seas in theory,
they have nothing to do with water. Though it’s possible
that it’s all a matter of perspective,
and so, the dark spot your breast became
was a sea, too. And the water in your lungs, stomach—
see, I remember correctly. And because you can’t hear
underwater—could I have really said everything?
I’ll be good, just don’t—
see, these are useless things to say underwater too.
I smear the makeup you left behind
on my face in an effort to love myself.
And I think I’ll eventually drink these two bottles
of perfume that have been here ever since—
what else could I do with them?
You said something, as it turned out,
at the very end. And I didn’t pay attention.
Since then, there hasn’t been a relationship,
because this isn’t that. Just steps
on the shore of a theoretical sea.
On those parts that aren’t closed.

Water in Your Arm / Karodban víz

Water has accumulated in your arm, that’s how they put it,
how they explained what your crazy organs were doing.
All I saw was it had swelled unbelievably.
The water was in it, but where exactly—
this lack of understanding stays with me.
God works in mysterious ways,
He did this too: your arm, there,
with the water in it, God inside it.
They propped up your arms as you were lying down,
as if stretching. The water—I imagine—
you took with you. The sea, the monotonous buzzing
I think about to fall asleep—
though it’s never worked—comes to mind.
And your echoes lurking inside me.
I don’t know. I pull the pain out slowly,
carefully, like a picture. One candle on the cake,
I’m screaming or yawning, no one can tell which.
You aren’t in it, just your hands,
which cradle me: like how water cradles light,
garbage, anything, itself.

Night Draft, Read Over in the Morning / Esti vázlat, reggel átolvasni

I suppose I’m always dreaming about a woman, after all,
that’s true, like any young man my age should.
But they only call me young man on the bus,
to step aside, and the woman I dream about is dead and heavy,
like anyone who hasn’t taken an easy breath in ten years.
I call you Mother, like I never did while you were alive,
like others call me young man.
I can’t tell you to step aside.
I try not to miss you, but
there’s only one kind of love,
just how there are no two kinds of darkness,
and it doesn’t matter who’s lying down or where.
I look more like you every day. I’ve written that before.
But what should I do about it? I don’t remember
what you said, only the sound of your voice
as you said it. But what is your voice worth?
Garden, a light summer night around me. Exact.
Even the emptiness between two objects is in its place.
It’s getting cold. I’ll go inside soon. I’ll hug the person
waiting for me in there. Like in a t-shirt now,
I’m cold in this mourning. And like in a fever dream,
I’m afraid I’ll burn in it.

Pre-Season / Előszezon

I rode here facing backwards. The cabins are whiter,
the water is deeper, than last year—the same things
still available in the stores. The beach is dead,
that’s why I came. There’s a future here: it’s pre-season,
with everything still to come.
I look around, I should get a beer.
And a greener green and a lighter blue.
Because memory is white,
like the cabins you change in.
I left my laptop at home.
It’s full of your pictures, and I don’t
want to caress the screen anymore—to lie,
because I don’t need honesty, I need you.
I know precisely how the ending will play out.
I’ll say: I need a beer. And how I was happy.
How. I won’t find out now.
Like what the only sleeping person on a crashing plane
must dream about.

Denial in Practice / A takadás gyakorlása

This isn’t a towel, it’s my sweater you’re wiping your face on,
even though I’m wearing it. Not exactly
how it happened, but enough for a memory.
This isn’t beautiful, just rolling paper stained purple. I was cutting onions
before I rolled this cigarette, purple onions, this purple, burning nothing.
This isn’t my brain, it’s instant coffee. This isn’t gonna be night,
I’m just shutting off the monitor. This isn’t silence, just me reading
the spines of the books tossed on the shelves while lying down.
This isn’t you not being here, but let’s say you went in first,
because the bath was ready, and I said I’ll be there in a minute, but first
I’m gonna listen to this while I get undressed. Some song.
Let’s say these are the lyrics.
Not exactly, but that’s enough for a poem.
This isn’t music, just something I say to myself while I get undressed,
so quietly that it looks like my purple lips are shaking from swimming too long.
This isn’t a poem, but something the wind blew over from the building
across the street—are they tearing it down or just building it?—
a seven-story-long, green, plastic safety net I’ve gotten myself tangled up in.
These are the things I say while thinking about your spine, your naked back,
and something, like an unfinished sentence, an unfulfilled promise,
always between us. And then about how if it’s a safety net,
why doesn’t it keep me safe?

To Do / Teendők

Throw everything away.
Just not that picture, I know you can barely see me
in it, but when we took it, it was the last time we were happy.
Just not that twenty-something-year-old coffee machine,
even though it’s crap and for a while now
some has gotten clogged in it–like blood in the pulmonary valve—every day.
Or that bar of soap that smells like violets, the one with spring written on it,
even though I broke it in two. And the bed, don’t wash the bedsheets
either, put them away. At least, if nothing else, my smell will stay
behind. And don’t let the sky-blue walls fade, or the linoleum,
the small, patterned one, how much I stared at it,
every detail of it reminds me of you.
Just the mirror, don’t throw that out, please.
Though it’s fading, it was yours, it watched you.
I know you could never see yourself in it, it’s blurry
and up too high, but don’t throw it out,
there was never anything in it, no, only you.

White Noise / Fehér zaj

I wake up to the phone ringing, look for it for a long time
sitting up in bed. Where am I—I almost ask
you, when I pick it up and recognize your voice. I can barely understand
what you’re saying, this phone is old and shitty
(back then, I wanted to text you from this same phone
that I hope you die—but I hadn’t paid the bill).
I listen to you, whatever it is you’re saying
sounds like loving whispers on this phone, which wakes me up.
I think you’re just trying to chat—
kindness without much at stake, which never worked for me.
I’m not kind (I just bluff sometimes).
I look out the window, it’s burning hot outside, in here
it’s pretty cool. One day I’ll be able to write
about how I didn’t care what you were saying,
or that I didn’t even wake up. Though I’m pretty tired
these days, I can’t sleep without hearing your breathing,
I just know that you are. I walk the streets
after midnight. Sometimes I eat, sometimes I watch
amateur livestream porn on the internet (trying to believe it’s not all for show)—
this is how I bore myself. Love is like pollution.
You can choose not to think about it. But I don’t think
I’ll ever be cold to you (I’ll just bluff sometimes).
When you hang up, I’ll go back to sleep—in the light
I can still sleep pretty well, because for a long time you loved me
after dark. And the empty, characterless dreams can begin – – –
until then, I’ll listen to you in silence, like after turning off an alarm.

Accidentally Good / Véletlenül jó

The point of the game is simple: you’re locked in.
You need to rifle through the place. What you find, will help you
get out. Look everywhere, remember everything.
For example, if you stick the bobby pin you found on the ground
into the outlet and it short circuits, a back-up lamp will light up red,
and a word will appear on the wall, which, if you write into the laptop
waiting on the desk, you’ll get a set of numbers as an answer.
A date to open the door’s combination lock with.
And you’re out. This is the game we play,
lying in front of the computer, an online escape game,
one round after the next, all night long, almost four thirty.
Today, we leave the dark, short-circuited rooms
inside each other alone. Today, we’re accidentally happy.
If I were to look up at the ceiling and find the date there,
I’d switch off the light, so I wouldn’t have to see it yet.
These people aren’t even us. What’ll you say about this later?
What can I say? I remember everything,
but it’s not worth anything. Nearly morning,
past seven, but it’s winter, this is still ours,
see, you can look for me anywhere,
I was darkness, I’m passing now.

In the Best of Cases, South / Jó esetben a dél

For K.I., with respect

In the best of cases, I seldom need to talk to my loved ones.
It wears on me that I can only answer their questions with lies.
Without their advice, I believe more and more that, like wild geese,
instinct will take me south, but I don’t really know.
Where is this south?
I don’t consider my words to be worth very much,
though in this country they say light came to be
when someone said just one word. Of course, I can say whatever
I want, there won’t be any light. This is how far I’ve gotten:
sometimes I say there’s a way out, and after saying it, it seems like there is.
Of course, there isn’t. That’s not how it works.
Though I could part with anything. In the best of cases,
I could let go of light with a word or two.
I should put this off, because it’s easy, for instance,
to write autumn, when you can compare something to anything.
Or maybe just my things.
But right now, it’s spring. Right now, in the best of cases,
the night is always a little longer than fear.

Porcelain / Porcelán

Now that we’ve both had enough,
and I’m almost positive you’ll never again say
that you love me—though the last time
it still felt like that spinal injection from a few years ago
—I’ve finally started thinking clearly. About this whole thing.
That first poem I wrote about you, for instance—it’s as if someone else
had written it. It was called Porcelain. I sat in it alone
all morning, after dreaming about you.
That last part could have been true—I still often dream you—
the rest was probably just a nice lie.
According to the poem—I recall—
I was drinking tea, which I’ve never actually liked,
and that’s always been a shame to me—it’s so elegant to drink tea.
These are the kinds of things I think about. And where I went wrong
is that I shouldn’t have been writing about these things
because—I see now—time is impossible to talk about.
It would’ve been more honest to mold it out of something—
more honest, even now—like out of porcelain.
We could be a deformed mug, a broken ashtray.
A sink dented with an iron pipe, tiles and toilet bowls.
Or we could be Hummel figurines.
Disgusting kitsch, but valuable. Peasant girl
and peasant boy on the shore. Nicked gold coating, a memory
of nothing, an object of sentimentality, a decoration,
prospective rubbish. And on the other side,
because you can still turn it around, if you wanted to,
only this: I can only break, I can’t escape.

3:45 AM / Háromnegyed négy

The trees, that’s good, yes, let’s start with the trees,
how they’re almost all the same at dawn, like now.
There’s little light, I’m cold. Inside, you’re sleeping. I’m silent
in front of the only one I could talk to
right now. I’m not shivering, so no one can tell I’m freezing.
I say something to myself, I can see my breath. I watch it.
In this sparse light, that’s nearly all I am,
watching everything sleep with eyes half-open.
Your eyes, your closed eyes inside, are light, simple,
like the sky at this hour. Like anything at this hour.
I should light up, that’s why I came outside. No,
I came outside because I couldn’t fall back asleep.
And I hate waiting. I should wake you up,
I should tell you to look at the color of my eyes, yes,
that there was a time I thought even that a flaw. I don’t understand
why you need me, I’d tell you, easier to say with the smell of your lap
fresh on my hand. And I don’t know how long you’ll need to hold me
on a given day to hold me over until nightfall, so just hold me.
These are the kinds of things I should say to you.
Inside, you’re sleeping. I look at the side of the sky that falls
on my heart, its heavy color. I’m smoking. It’s good like this, if cold.
I’m glad I tucked you in. We’re equal, see,
if I were to subtract you from me, nothing would remain.

Plastic / Sokáig fehér

I don’t remember it exactly,
only the feeling that I was lost,
in ’94 or ’95, probably in a pair of shorts,
because the weather was nice,
walking around the courtyard of a hospital
with an empty plastic bag in my hand,
I had been sent to pick up lunch.
The details are lost, as they should be.
It was spring, and I was in no mood
to go pick up lunch, I still remember
that somehow, that it was bad
for some reason, that we have lunch made,
the lunch itself was bad too—
my mom could cook well, while she still could.
But why we would have lunch made at the hospital,
that I can’t even—it doesn’t matter. It was a nice day.
It was the first time I’d gone to pick up the lunch
by myself, I didn’t really know what to do,
and I couldn’t ask anyone either,
so after wandering around a while I went in
—through the first door I could find,
and then down the stairs—to pathology. I was ten.
I didn’t tell anyone at home about this either.
Nothing really happened, I don’t know
what they could’ve said. Maybe if there had been someone
who knew everything, they could’ve said, Look,
in two weeks, your mother will be lying there,
at the end of that vomit-colored, plastic-paneled corridor,
not far from where you’re standing now.
I’d look at them, like a frog thrown into a barrel,
staring up—it already knows it’s been caught,
only waiting now to get a cigarette stuffed into its mouth
(a popular and horrible game, I think,
the frog swells and dies). But that was then.
Now, it’s raining, the deep of night, etc.
A bed waits for me, in it, someone
I’d rather be thinking about—
like when you aimlessly ride the elevator,
because there’s just no other way to lift
up your heart. I’m thinking about the person
I had wanted to beat up
when he said, they’re doing the autopsy.
Someone who takes something out of us
and knows, out of routine,
how much it weighs, just by holding it,
but puts it on the scale anyway.
I’m thinking about the missing parts.
Holding that damn bag,
slick with sweat, white, empty,
how it needs hundreds of years to decompose.

Winter, Train Station / Tél, pályaudvar

This is winter. These days.
Light blue, cold—like unheated train cars—
and dim. What falls inside me doesn’t melt.
I’m writing. Maybe I’ll forget you this way. Maybe this way I’ll forget you.
That it should be spring, without it bothering me
when they tell me about the floods again. That they destroyed
what remained. Your remains—if, of course, there were any.
I shouldn’t dream about a dark, underground sea,
how it rocks you, knowing upon waking
that it caught me too (my back, my face is soaked).
Love is a glass, emptied. I clutch it. I should put it down.
I sit in the dispersed light of the train station, look around in the cold.
I didn’t bring you any chocolate then.
There’s no reason to look for it now, I couldn’t find any anyway.
It’s going to be spring. Until then, I’ll make up for your sleep
with my sleeplessness. This is all we have.
Like someone who’s been bumped into by accident,
I’m annoyed, but I’m not angry.
You’re not angry.

Still There, Shivering / És ez egy

I don’t have a way to take to you.
Still. I love you. I remember
how there wasn’t even enough meat on you
to feed a ten-year-old boy. Or just me.

I picture you in your clothes, like a child
picturing tea into a play teacup. This is what has stayed with me.

I hold my arms to my chest for a while.
Then I just want to light up, but I’m embarrassed to in front of you
– – – this is the only way I can picture you, with a face,
though I always hold a different mask in front of it,
you could be anything, just not what you are.

I was cold. I ripped the weeds, sat on a gravestone,
they’d raked the summer away and closingtime, they said.
You’re still there, shivering like chicken feathers
in the grass, trembling in the wind.

Song from the Mezzanine / Dal a magasföldszintről

I just noticed the white stains on these pants,
which I haven’t worn in two years, but I found them
today and put them on, just because.
The cause of the stains is undeniable
(I even remember the particular instance).
I found an old pair of pants today, I don’t know
where, I’m packing everything up, I haven’t worn these in two years,
that’s when we moved in together, I just put them on,
though I never liked them—I never liked how they looked on me.
Moving here, on the other hand, was good, because you were here,
you, who wore the light and shadow well.
I’m moving out tomorrow, but today I accidentally
found an old pair of pants, put them on and noticed the
white stains around the crotch. Since then,
I’ve been sitting in this armchair, frozen.
Trying to love me looked bad on you.
Our time is full of white stains, that’s undeniable.
And even though I know what’s going to happen, I don’t want to see it,
but now you’re everywhere, there’s nowhere for me to look—
so I’ll close my eyes, just like I did then, just like that.

In Place of a Song, Part I / Dal helyett 1

The season is over, it was a nice spring, every one
of its days is done, all that remains is forgetting,
it can live on happily without me, behind some wall.
It’s light outside, I open the window I didn’t clean
for the holidays. Everything’s a mess, I can’t find anything,
not even my lighter. It was a nice spring, but otherwise
nothing happened, and I don’t want to talk about it. Perhaps lie
something interesting and bearable. That that really was a holiday,
who cares about dates? Or something like that. To talk
about the body, so that someone listening can feel embarrassed.
And about the soul, so they’ll be impressed.
My mind is a mess, full of objects in place of dreams,
like the nights. Like my room. There was a body,
and what came with it. It wasn’t the time of my life,
or I hope not. Who cares. I write down holiday,
I can’t place it anywhere. The sun shines, I’m sitting.
They’ve been tearing down a wall
at one of the neighbor’s for weeks. You should wash
your face. And mine. I have nothing to do
with our story. Like how the Sea Salt on my table
has nothing to do with the color blue.

In Place of a Song, Part II / Dal helyett 2

if I finally fall into a deep and empty sleep
at the kitchen table suddenly exhausted
as I most like to do and only the muted TV flashes
as though it were dreaming in place of me
and the news comes on again a couple of whales
have washed themselves ashore but no one watches
as the lonely reporter in the foreground gapes gray water
behind her helpless environmentalists
you can see one lie down next to a whale
practically spooning it like someone getting ready for sleep
it’s an ordinary night I’ll finally go to sleep too
because I can’t recall anything about you anymore
only the unwritten intentions remain that I should but I can’t
this is how everything I cannot do stays behind
the whales don’t know why they do it either
they just know they have to and feelings all look the same
like animals from a distance the taste of the larger bodies
of water will wait in blue packages on the table
beside my elbow but I don’t even remember
how salty a body can be see it’s a joke
if all that becomes of you is a poem
but I can’t write I just lie down suddenly exhausted
like after swimming beside me a massive blue darkness
out on the shore the water dwellers
so there’s nothing left in the deep anymore

Monologue / Monológ

For Dad

Father, your son loves you, truly
loves you. Like an invalid and a bed,
some kind of force holds you together,
better put: gravity, perhaps time.
But time is a spilled pint of water,
mud survives it, thirst—no one’s fault.
It’s shamefully simple.
Just saying nothings instead
of something concrete, while balding
like you. He loves you, Father,
like an oil lamp left on,
you burn inside him.
An orphaned thing. How easy
it would be to say: look, what is that,
right at your eye level—you’re a bit shorter.
After all, a heart and a fist are similar
in shape. Like olive trees and silence.
He would only ask, if he ever would,
like this, so you wouldn’t understand,
because you don’t speak English:
“Why have you forsaken me?”

Már / Ez is milyen

How many things have changed over the years,
even the meanings of things have changed,
like apparently all our cells do every seven years.
The word már, for instance, no longer means already to me,
no longer reminds me of break-ups or diagnoses,
only that it means sea in Spanish.
And I can even feel the sunlight in it,
although I don’t speak Spanish. I still remember
Goya though, or what Goya said in a film,
that he should have had his hands cut off,
after finishing one of his paintings. And the war,
which he must’ve dreamt, but which I saw,
where they cut off the hands of little boys,
so they could not be forced to hold guns.
As if that’s all hands were good for.
If someone were to cut off my hands,
what could I no longer hold?
Sometimes you make my lips bleed, and I turn away,
enjoying the salty taste—like the sea.
Then what comes to mind is that whale hearts are heavy,
like one or two thousand pounds.

And One More Morning / És még egy délelőtt

I don’t need to talk about the rest of it,
or maybe I don’t know how,
and most of still stands,
but it may be worthwhile to talk
about the looming winter light
of that morning. Remembering a hallway,
which wasn’t important to write down,
like a phone number, or explain in detail
like a manual for a locker or a pregnancy test.
How on that nondescript Saturday morning,
walking to the courtyard in that long, blue-gray light,
tired and hungover, I ran my hand across the tiles on the wall,
and they were cold, and that reminded me of you.
I don’t know why, exactly, this wasn’t the beginning
or the end, so it didn’t make sense,
but they reminded me of your cold feet,
how you used to press them against my stomach
before sleep—though by then we weren’t sleeping
in the same bed anymore. I was thinking
how there was probably something else
on your mind right then. You’re sitting, eating,
maybe you haven’t even woken up yet,
or whatever you’re doing, you’re not thinking of me.
It wouldn’t hurt to know, I thought, my stomach shaking
violently, that later, when you’re sleeping alone
next to someone else, and I’ll be free,
like a phone number written down wrong,
or a manual for a missing device,
that basically, it would be good to know
that you’ll sometimes suffer without me,
and that everything will – – – it was winter, and
I wanted everything that was cold to remind you of me.
I was dizzy, I missed you, and by the time
I made it to the courtyard, I was thinking how this whole thing:
me, the trees, this garden, this Saturday, everything,
probably doesn’t exist, never did, never will,
that this is just you imagining me.
That’s what I thought about,
and it was good.