PHOTOGRAPHS Poem by Mária Ferenčuhová

1
A landscape - a map.
Houses scattered around
or completely washed away,
remnants of squares,
intersections with perfect surfaces,
carefully-drawn lanes,
black-white,
not a trace of blood,
an abandoned construction set,
only the road is absorbed by mud
or mud licks the road.

A little boy has lost interest,
dribbling the ball on another playground.



2
Thousands of springlets, streams, feeders
run on the rocks, growing wider,
advancing, roaring,
and if you stumble,
first they go round you like a pebble,
someone stops, dams the stream,
other ones leap over, pull,
walk on,
trample -

a bit further,
down aslant,
in the red heat
the only drop slides down the tube,
falls on a stone, bounces off, sizzles,
the rest evaporate by the way -

a rough, dry
little tongue
licks my hand:

more.



3
Somewhere on the fringe of perception
lithospheric plates
move somewhat,
the back straightens,
vertebrae crack,
the earth moves,
the giantess yawns,
and immediately digests
all that falls inside.



4
A landscape - a postcard.
Containers, boxes,
the noses of houses dug into the soil.
In the giant pavement cracks
invasions of scavengers are confronted with only boards,
papers and bricks.
On an empty ground two trees remained.
Celestial peace
- or almost celestial -
on the cathedral without towers
ruins rise up like hairs standing on end .



5
We are watchmakers.
Me and my little son.
He has two alarm clocks. He says:
I want these two alarm clocks
to be next to each other.
This one will be Next to
and this one Each other.

Create the world from words.
From nothing:



6
A landscape - scenery.
Once magnificent buildings,
palaces of modernism,
tall railway headquarters
with all their windows smashed,
a station, a hotel, a department store,
a hospital, a villa on the hill,
nearby, housing estates,
cardboards, concrete, glass,
cracked stucco,
sagging walls, layers of dirt,
skeletons of cities in too vast a space.
And hordes of vandals
on short-legged horses
occupy distant shores,
there is still a place to travel to,
things to eat
and anything old can be
looked up in archives
but hardly anyone would do it.



7
Not everything is in vain.
Now and then grass trembles,
lashes rise, revealing the gaze.
You look at me. You see me.
Today my hair won't fall over my face,
a cut won't ruin the frontal image.
I won't hide behind the screen again,
today we'll rest on the axis of our looks
at eye level
(you needn't always wish to go as far as heaven)
and move our gaze from above the table
nearby,
into the bedroom or onto the carpet.



8
Mucous membranes, villi, tissue, cytoplasm,
fibrils, folded clusters, geometrical figures,
- a world ruined at a stroke.
The substance remains constant:
one organism absorbs another,
building palaces on its foundations.
A haemorrhagic shock, studying the contents of the chamber pot,
external signs, sunken eyes, dry mouth,
fatigue. A faint smile. Without a smile.
Or without any symptoms:
a sudden fall from the staircase right to coma.
The torn, cut, scratched
skin at least allows
the healing process to be observed.
I can't hear moist threads tear inside me.
I observe the skin in panic.
It must reflect what goes on inside!
But macro world replies micro world.
Somewhere in the distance other cities
collapsed with rumbling or resistance.



9
We are embracing each other in an old house,
when it shakes with construction works in the loft.
We hide behind double glazing and thick walls,
under the ceiling held up by the warmed air.
We pushed the cot close to our bed
to feel safer,
while the wind rattles
the open roof and the sun whitens it
like a trepanned skull of a patient dead for centuries.



10
You sleep. The dust on the furniture doesn't stir.
The parquet floor isn't squeaky.
Our son still sleeps, too.
Only on the walls, among the toys,
in the bookcase and under the cupboard,
in the bathroom behind the washing machine,
next to the sofa and on the window frame
his clock ticks fiercely, without mercy.