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Poetry

Crystal-Study

By István László G.
Translated from Hungarian by István Geher

Your neckline, like a glacier
among the ice-slopes of your skin, displays
that it’s cold under the surface. Often
you look at me. I don’t mind. A waning
moon is your soul, the sickle thinning
until new moon. Some women, I’m saying
this offstage, have between their fingers
a web of ice, these are watery creatures.

Now tell me, when I get home would you help me off
with my coat, putting on the rack whatever
can be stuffed on a hanger of a day, saying
perhaps, I missed you, like someone
who drops a cube of ice in the crystal glass
and offers the treat clinking. Your pearly nails
would never reach to the dish—
I like the one who
dreams frost on my sight when she doesn’t even
look me in the eye, gazing at the mirror,
on her own light, forever skating.

Translation of “Kristály-tanulmány.” Copyright István László G. By arrangement with the author. Translation copyright 2007 by István Geher. All rights reserved.

English

Your neckline, like a glacier
among the ice-slopes of your skin, displays
that it’s cold under the surface. Often
you look at me. I don’t mind. A waning
moon is your soul, the sickle thinning
until new moon. Some women, I’m saying
this offstage, have between their fingers
a web of ice, these are watery creatures.

Now tell me, when I get home would you help me off
with my coat, putting on the rack whatever
can be stuffed on a hanger of a day, saying
perhaps, I missed you, like someone
who drops a cube of ice in the crystal glass
and offers the treat clinking. Your pearly nails
would never reach to the dish—
I like the one who
dreams frost on my sight when she doesn’t even
look me in the eye, gazing at the mirror,
on her own light, forever skating.

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