Poetry: Kinga Fabó (Hungary)

Exclusive: Poetry from Europe and other Western locations: Curated by Agron Shele

Kinga Fabó (Hungaria)

Kinga Fabó, Hungarian poet, linguist and essayist has written five books of poetry but I didn’t know her work until someone else asked if 1 would translate a couple of her poems. People do occasionally ask this — so few of us translate poetry from Hungarian after all — and sometimes there is time, and the poems are powerful enough to demand that at least I try. That was the case with these two poems that immediately struck me with their vigour, virtuosity and intensity. Both poems are about the conventional apparatus of womanhood and presentation, mirror and girdle being associated with the process of being appraised. It is actually the girdle that speaks in one of them: ‘This sorry item, all for some man to woo or bride them.’ The promiscuous mirror is born out of the same disappointment and fury at circumstances, but is less gendered and will wipe out any face before it. The poems are in effect dialogues with an invisible other, racy in diction, almost chatty but at the same time metaphysical. It is the blend of fury and wit that determine the emotional key but it is the form and rhyme that lend both the sharp, hard-edged, proverbial, almost Villonesque quality I was trying to catch.

The Promiscuous Mirror

1.

Is it detached or all-forgiving?

We need a passport to get through.

It nods us past in quick succession

Just anyone, no matter who.

I can rely on its detachment

As I move from place to place.

All those languages it masters,

Wherever I dare show my face!

It’s no big deal who’s looking in it

As it serves its own blind grace.

2

It neither befriends nor breaks up with you.

Though when you’re pushed in front of it

Whether you’re plain or just plain gorgeous

It frowns and takes the brunt of it.

Could this absolute indifference

Be Absolute? (It takes no joy

In my bare flesh, nor is it bored.)

In all my phases I am simply

What seems to vanish then return,

Part of its cosmic unconcern.

3

The distance is too terrifying.

It could be less but it is clear

Some speck of me would still appear.

The mirror will serve us blindly

And whether harshly or quite kindly

Forgets at once. There’s little fuss,

Or major choice required for us.

It lets us do just what we want.

Mine drops me quick without a trace.

Mechanically wipes out my face.

The Complaint of a Worn-out Girdle

How many women have I tortured? God,

how many! And how perfectly deformed

their bodies were as one by one they trod

the red carpet, swayed and posed

in gratitude to me, I who prefer a closed

door to the blatantly exposed

(and they pretend to disdain me even while

seeking my good graces, S & M style)

insist I serve them with a wide eyed smile.

Those who possess me seek the praise

 - and might receive it - of the blank male gaze.

They use me and disparage me all ways

and yet are one with me, have flounced

about while in my steady grip

or slipped into me unannounced.

Talking of perverts, I am stuffed with them,

(this is where it comes to S & M),

it’s like being in a prison cell.

I am the stock where these mad bats from hell

work out. I work my magic well

and turn them out as new after a spell.

They undo me, as might anyone.

I am what they have done.

But why do they insist on carying on

with me - the feeling isn’t mutual -

with me in particular!

Why pick on me when there are

plenty - women or worms - it matters not

happy to give them all they’ve got.

All clichés, you can stuff the lot

into one old hat and call it quits.

I’m not for clichés, not one fits.

I wish they left me alone, but it’s

hopeless, I am forced to serve.

I’m always different and will swerve

from following an alien curve.

Is this their thanks? This sorry item. .

All for some man to woo or bride them.

A pity it is to prettify them.

(Translated by George Szirtes)

Setu, September 2018