translated from the Hungarian by Ottilie Mulzet

A comb buried in the ground, a wristwatch sunk in water,
a bird cadaver lying in the snow . . .
A Christmas card one century old
in the drawer that was hit by a bomb.
A bundle of pictures of those who are nowhere,
standing by the shore, leaning over a child,
dark hair fluttering in the summer wind.
Beneath the ruins of the house, the edges of shards,
long ago burnt in the fire of time.

The wan-lit pocket flashlight strains
to save something, anything from the night.
To blaze the nothing into borrowed existence.
To make, in a broken piece of mirror,
the past’s extinguished decades glint.
As the foam sets above the stone,
as the ripple disperses in soundless water —
in the end, only unwrinkled nonexistence remains,
as if there’d never been anything at all.

---

Zsuzsa Rakovszky was born in Sopron in 1950, where she lives to this day. Her father passed away when she was still a small child. After receiving a teaching diploma for Hungarian and English from Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest in 1975, she first worked as a librarian after graduation. Beginning in the 1980s, she began working as an editor, and from 1987 onward, as a freelance writer and translator. Her first book of poetry was Jóslatok és határidők (Prophecies and deadlines), although it was her second volume Tovább egy házzal (One house later), that brought her wide attention. Starting from the turn of the millennia, Rakovszky began writing prose as well, publishing several acclaimed novels. In 1990, she participated in the International Writing Program of the University of Iowa. Her poetry has been translated into English by George Szirtes (New Life, London, Oxford University Press, 1994), and her bestselling novel Shadow of the Snake appeared in German, Italian, Bulgarian, and Dutch.

Ottilie Mulzet has translated over nineteen volumes of Hungarian poetry and prose from contemporary authors such as László Krasznahorkai, Szilárd Borbély, Gábor Schein, György Dragomán, László Földényi, István Vörös, Edina Szvoren, and others. Her translation of László Krasznahorkai’s Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming was awarded the National Book Award in Translated Literature in 2019. Her translation of Krisztina Tóth’s Eye of the Monkey is forthcoming from Seven Stories Press in October 2025.

---

This poem will appear in Under a Pannonian Sky: Ten Women Poets from Hungary, edited by Ottilie Mulzet (forthcoming from Seagull Books, December 2025). It is published here are as part of the thirteenth installment of our “Literature & Democracy column,” which presents writers’ responses to the threats to democracy around the world.

Subscribe to Read More