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      • Kazi Nazrul Islam by Dr. Shamenaz Shaikh >
        • Chapter 1(Nazrul Islam)
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      • Kabir's Poetry by Dr. Anshu Pandey >
        • Chapter 1(Kabir's Poetry)
        • Chapter 2(Kabir's Poetry)
        • Chapter 3(Kabir's Poetry)
      • My mind's not right by Dr. Vicky Gilpin >
        • Chapter- 1 Dr. Vicky Gilpin
        • Chapter-2 Dr. Vicky Gilpin
        • Chapter-3 Dr. Vicky Gilpin
        • Chapter-4 Dr. Vicky Gilpin
      • On Poetry & Poets by Abhay K.
      • Poetry of Kamla Das –A True Voice Of Bourgeoisie Women In India by Dr.Shikha Saxena
      • Identity Issues in the Poetry of Nissim Ezekiel by Dr.Arvind Nawale & Prashant Mothe*
      • Nissim Ezekiel’s Latter-Day Psalms: His Religious and Philosophical Speculations By Dr. Pallavi Srivastava
      • The Moping Owl : the Epitome of Melancholy by Zinia Mitra
      • Gary Soto’s Vision of Chicano Experiences: The Elements of San Joaquin and Human Nature by Paula Hayes
      • Sri Aurobindo: A Poet By Aju Mukhopadhyay
      • Wordsworthian Romanticism in the Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra: Nature and the Reflective Capabilities of a Poetic Self by Paula Hayes
      • Reflective Journey of T.S. Eliot: From Philosophy to Poetry by Syed Ahmad Raza Abidi
      • North East Indian Poetry: ‘Peace’ in Violence by Ananya .S. Guha
    • 2014-2015 >
      • From The Hidden World of Poetry: Unravelling Celtic mythology in Contemporary Irish Poetry Adam Wyeth
      • Alchemy’s Drama: Conflict, Resolution and Poiesis in the Poetic Work of Art by Michelle Bitting
      • Amir Khushrau: The Musical Soul of India by Dr. Shamenaz
      • PUT YOUR HANDS ON ME: POETRY'S EROTIC ART by Elena Karina Byrne
      • Celtic and Urban Landscapes in Irish Poetry by Linda Ibbotson
      • Trickster at the African Crossroads and the Bridge to the Blues in America by Michelle Bitting
    • 2015-2016 >
      • Orogeny/Erogeny: The “nonsense” of language and the poetics of Ed Dorn T Thilleman
      • Erika Burkart: Fragments, Shards, and Visions by Marc Vincenz
      • English Women Poets and Indian politics
    • 2016-2017 >
      • Children’s Poetry in India- A Case Study of Adil Jussawalla and Ananya Guha by Shruti Sareen
      • Thirteen Thoughts on Poetry in the Digital Age by Mandy kAHN
    • 2017-2018 >
      • From Self-Portrait with Dogwood: A Route of Evanescence by Christopher Merrill
      • Impure Poetry by Tony Barnstone
      • On the Poets: Contributors in Context by Donald Gardner
      • Punching above its Weight: Dutch Poetry in English, a Selection, 2013-2017 by Jane Draycott
  • Print Editions

Poems by Árpád Kollár

Not in Sarajevo 
(excerpts)


you cannot be a tourist in sarajevo
who, spittle drooling, takes inventory
of the appurtenances of horror
you cannot shove your palm
into the crevices left by grenades
as if in the millennial stones of the wailing wall
you would conceal your message


in Sarajevo you cannot be a sarajevan


in Sarajevo you cannot know
what you could be and what you would have been


in Sarajevo every morning you arrive and
adherence falls due once darkness descends


*


in sarajevo the trees are the most naïve
into the bare firewalls they plunge
their tentative roots
and they absorb the bricks more greedily
than young girls the force of life


in sarajevo the little trees do not bother
with politics
the hundred-year oaks sit with
tranquility in their tenant spots
they are not troubled
the city just now being built up or destroyed
to slowly  exchange my shelter for leafy bowers


in sarajevo wise little trees only breathe
suck in the bricks
diligently they grow
for they are aware
around here you can never know


*


sarajevo burned for two days
the library all at once
I tell the story here at home for two days
my friend repeats with a shudder
to measure quantity through time
two days’ worth of books and manuscripts
we should echo them
all the while we have no idea
how long the average body takes to burn


(Translated by Ottilie Muzlet)




(If You Slam the Door…)


If you slam the door, your flesh will open, 
if you smash it, every fury will close.
In your eyes are yellow wreaths, pupils struck by airstream, 
puddles of tiredness. The Armenians are passing by
inside that mirror, a column, a stumbling.
Nothing happened today, nothing happened
tomorrow, your gipsy skin reaches just to the object.
If you kick your leg into that door, a little girl will burst into tears,
if you finally half-close it, that little girl will abort.




Circular River Bank


After a big flood, the city is imbued. Here and there five, 
six metres of earth, disappeared streams, ditches, thrown off joists.
The parterre of the remaining buildings has sunk into the ground level.
Cubic hordes.


Our four girls will be in that city.
Obstacles at the gateways, at the windy passages, neurotic,
blonde girls, similar to me.
We turn four polished faces towards the ground,
that way I will fully come back from inside you.


I am lazy and selfish. You have to infuse obstructed waters, 
saltpetre basement, to tailor the street side.
Instead of exile, let’s glut ourselves with the decking,
the eye of God on the house, rustic putties.


In the imbued city, a church on a landslide, a circular river bank.




The Warmth of the Body


With the egg of a Ural owl in your pocket, you climb. You climb
the blunt edge of a rock, the resinous bark, you climb on the uneven
surface of the landscape’s prominent things.


The impossible possibility of four spotted eggs. The thing you never thought of,
that you couldn’t meet, from which some careful fear kept you away. Knock,
hard shells are knocking like male friendships.  


Afternoons of boredom are knocking and you didn’t wait
for the shot in a wall of an eye orbit, and everything you would call home
quickly hard-boils, inside the pocket, with the warmth of the body.


Who thinks of you is climbing down, in the mouth white, in the mouth yellow
insipid bites. To bend closer to an imaginary place. For long you palpate
like the wet surface of star-like moss.


Who thinks of you easily with strong claws blinds light-minded robbers.


(Translated by Serena Todesco)




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Árpád Kollár was born Yugoslavia in 1980. He currently lives in Hungary. He earned degrees in theory of literature and sociology from the University of Szeged, where he is pursuing his doctoral studies. His book Milyen madár (Which Bird) received the award of Children’ Book of the Year in Hungary. He has two volumes of poetry published.

​


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  • Home
  • About Us
    • Contact
    • Media Coverages
    • Copyright Notice
    • VerseVille Blog
  • Submissions
    • Poetry and Essays Guidelines
    • Book Review Guidelines
    • Research Series Guidelines
  • Masthead
  • Editions
    • 2011 Issues >
      • ISSUE-XIV November 2011
    • 2012 Issues >
      • ISSUE-XV March 2012
      • ISSUE-XVI July 2012
      • ISSUE-XVII November 2012
    • 2013 Issues >
      • ISSUE-XVIII April 2013
      • ISSUE XIX November 2013
    • 2014 Issues >
      • ISSUE XX May 2014
    • 2015 Issues >
      • ISSUE XXI February 2015
      • Contemporary Indian English Poetry ISSUE XXII November 2015
    • 2016 Issues >
      • ISSUE XXIII August 2016
      • Poetry From Ireland ISSUE XXIV December 2016
    • 2017 ISSUES >
      • ISSUE XXV August 2017
      • ISSUE XXVI December 2017
    • 2018 ISSUES >
      • ISSUE XXVII July 2018
      • ISSUE XXVIII November 2018
    • 2019 Issues >
      • ISSUE XXIX July 2019
    • 2020 ISSUES >
      • Issue XXX February 2020
      • ISSUE XXXI December 2020
  • Collaborations
    • Macedonian Collaboration
    • Collaboration with Dutch Foundation for Literature
  • Interviews
  • Prose on Poetry and Poets
    • 2010-2013 >
      • Sylvia Plath by Dr. Nidhi Mehta >
        • Chapter-1(Sylvia Plath)
        • Chapter-2(Sylvia Plath)
        • Chapter-3(Sylvia Plath)
        • Chapter-4(Sylvia Plath)
        • Chapter-5(Sylvia Plath)
        • Chapter-6(Sylvia Plath)
      • Prose Poems of Tagore by Dr. Bina Biswas >
        • Chapter-1(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-2(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-3(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-4(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-5(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-6(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-7(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-8(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-9(Rabindranath Tagore)
      • Kazi Nazrul Islam by Dr. Shamenaz Shaikh >
        • Chapter 1(Nazrul Islam)
        • Chapter 2(Nazrul Islam)
        • Chapter 3(Nazrul Islam)
      • Kabir's Poetry by Dr. Anshu Pandey >
        • Chapter 1(Kabir's Poetry)
        • Chapter 2(Kabir's Poetry)
        • Chapter 3(Kabir's Poetry)
      • My mind's not right by Dr. Vicky Gilpin >
        • Chapter- 1 Dr. Vicky Gilpin
        • Chapter-2 Dr. Vicky Gilpin
        • Chapter-3 Dr. Vicky Gilpin
        • Chapter-4 Dr. Vicky Gilpin
      • On Poetry & Poets by Abhay K.
      • Poetry of Kamla Das –A True Voice Of Bourgeoisie Women In India by Dr.Shikha Saxena
      • Identity Issues in the Poetry of Nissim Ezekiel by Dr.Arvind Nawale & Prashant Mothe*
      • Nissim Ezekiel’s Latter-Day Psalms: His Religious and Philosophical Speculations By Dr. Pallavi Srivastava
      • The Moping Owl : the Epitome of Melancholy by Zinia Mitra
      • Gary Soto’s Vision of Chicano Experiences: The Elements of San Joaquin and Human Nature by Paula Hayes
      • Sri Aurobindo: A Poet By Aju Mukhopadhyay
      • Wordsworthian Romanticism in the Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra: Nature and the Reflective Capabilities of a Poetic Self by Paula Hayes
      • Reflective Journey of T.S. Eliot: From Philosophy to Poetry by Syed Ahmad Raza Abidi
      • North East Indian Poetry: ‘Peace’ in Violence by Ananya .S. Guha
    • 2014-2015 >
      • From The Hidden World of Poetry: Unravelling Celtic mythology in Contemporary Irish Poetry Adam Wyeth
      • Alchemy’s Drama: Conflict, Resolution and Poiesis in the Poetic Work of Art by Michelle Bitting
      • Amir Khushrau: The Musical Soul of India by Dr. Shamenaz
      • PUT YOUR HANDS ON ME: POETRY'S EROTIC ART by Elena Karina Byrne
      • Celtic and Urban Landscapes in Irish Poetry by Linda Ibbotson
      • Trickster at the African Crossroads and the Bridge to the Blues in America by Michelle Bitting
    • 2015-2016 >
      • Orogeny/Erogeny: The “nonsense” of language and the poetics of Ed Dorn T Thilleman
      • Erika Burkart: Fragments, Shards, and Visions by Marc Vincenz
      • English Women Poets and Indian politics
    • 2016-2017 >
      • Children’s Poetry in India- A Case Study of Adil Jussawalla and Ananya Guha by Shruti Sareen
      • Thirteen Thoughts on Poetry in the Digital Age by Mandy kAHN
    • 2017-2018 >
      • From Self-Portrait with Dogwood: A Route of Evanescence by Christopher Merrill
      • Impure Poetry by Tony Barnstone
      • On the Poets: Contributors in Context by Donald Gardner
      • Punching above its Weight: Dutch Poetry in English, a Selection, 2013-2017 by Jane Draycott
  • Print Editions