copyright © Helen Hajnoczky, 2016
first edition
Published with the generous assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. Coach House Books also acknowledges the support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit.
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Hajnoczky, Helen, author
Magyarázni / Helen Hajnoczky. -- First edition.
Poems.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-55245-327-8 (paperback)
I. Title.
PS8615A3857M3 2016 C811'.6 C2015-908210-2
Magyarázni is available as an ebook: ISBN 978 1 77056 441 1 (EPUB), 978 1 77056 442-8 (PDF), 978 1 77056 457 2 (MOBI)
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I am a word in a foreign language – Margaret Atwood, The Journals of Susanna Moodie
My hovercraft is full of eels. – ‘Dirty Hungarian Phrasebook,’ Monty Python’s Flying Circus
Save me your space-age techno-babble, Attila the Hun. –Zack Brannigan, Futurama
Diddynek
[For my father]
Pronunciation Guide
Bad, as an extended cat, as by absence, etc.
Like a tsunami, check your cheek like an etching.
The wide deck, like when you were a kid playing.
Jam in the fridge, the edge of a bridge.
You like less, on the edge of the bed.
You write a cheque, the same but without.
In a café you find euphoria.
Get on your legs, you go, etc. (Not used in English)
Similar to speaking like here, not so in English.
Basically, you say hi, but you’re behind and mute.
Human thick and thin.
You could lead, or leave sow seeds.
Swim in the sea. Yes, you have faith, the key.
Kiss, you’re weak, make lists, you leave.
Hey, your mind might assume a lying thing.
(Anywhere else), knit bones.
You go, the snow, forced sorcery.
(Not used in English; corresponds to the German Ö).
(Not used in English; a longer, more closed variant of Ö).
Your hands numb now from overuse.
You buy peas, apricots, you can hope.
You can wish it, say it, share it, shout it.
At least you can tell, or estimate.
Feast on something similar to stew.
(Not used in English) rude fool.
(Not used in English, corresponds to the german Ü).
(Not used in English) from every view, you could evolve.
Your room, clean, vacuumed.
you leave behind roses.
Pleasure, leisure, genre.
Deserted.
A
Altatódal
Doll, this altitude
holds the night close to the dull moon.
But here, gleaming like pitch,
we’re home again.
In English: peace attends the breeze.
Angels watch you tumble from the trees,
swaddled in nightlight,
aching for daybreak.
In Hungarian: the peppers and carrots
and onions take up flutes and fiddles,
flailing stalks and jiving roots,
they leap into the pot.
Instead of waiting for your branch to break,
you’re ebbed to sleep by a simmering cauldron,
the English of your mother’s song,
Hungarian of your father’s.
The nightlight dances on the wall
like a pepper set for the soup.
All to tell, not too dull.
You sleep.
Á
Állatkert
A K-car or school bus or Suburban to tour the
living bestiary of the plains. Point and this is
the North American land-dwelling water horse,
the mountains, cold north, snow, and each hide
is a map splotched with continents, aerial views of
possible worlds where a cow is a hippo, where a
hippo is a horse, where Hungarian is Latin, where
the Suburban is broken down at the Petro-Can just
outside of town, bus broken down in the Kananaskis,
K-car stuck in the city snow. Black squirrels
scramble up birch trees, cows graze, a field
of hay bales a bowl of giant Shredded Wheat and
the time rolls by, foothills roll into Rockies, snow
settles, packs into ice on the sidewalk. You are
a quiet little creature, snow mammal,
prairie dweller, adapted from a temperate
climate, the rhythm of your hibernation,
the Latin of your silly jokes.