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In bed with the radio

IN BED WITH THE RADIO

 

You’d turned against me. There’s safety in knowing, I thought.
Like lying in bed with the radio, listening to the war;
cocooning ourselves in the brutality across the border.

 

Trying to dodge history
– bloodied, lashing out to protect its young –
we played dead as best we could.
Lie still, don’t make a sound; maybe it’ll leave you be.

 

I’ve had nosebleeds for years, I said,
and look how even now the blood comes in bursts,
like this crackling transmission
from some Bosnian partisan’s radio.

 

 

*

 

 

THE ONE I SHOULD BE TELLING

 

Cold as cold cream you were
that’s what I remember of that summer.
retreating into shadow of your words,
like crawling under the boughs of a tree.

 

The slight change in pressure
that makes a breath a sigh
and the troubles in your breast
rattling like rusty cans.

 

Sometimes, I mistake you for your memory.
To touch you now,
I must reach across the mirror of remembering.

 

You were, back then,
the one I should be telling now.


ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR

was born in 1982 in Budapest. He has been publishing poems since 2009, which have appeared in the Hungarian literary journals Holmi, Jelenkor, Ex Symposion and Litera among others. His first collection of poems, Ahol Megszakad, was published by Libri in Budapest in 2012.

Mark Baczoni was born in Budapest and raised in London. He read History and History of Art at Cambridge, and has a Master's from the Central European University in Budapest. His first book-length translation, Alexander Lénárd's Stories of Rome was published by Corvina in 2013. A translation of Jenö Rejtö's 'The Fourteen Carat Car' will be published by Corvina in the spring. Baczoni is a member of the TA, ETN, and English PEN.

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