TE20 Migrant Mosaics

Songs for 3:45 am (poems) Márton Simon Translated from Hungarian by Timea Sipos

Már

How many things have changed over the years, even the meanings of things have changed, like apparently all our cells do every seven years. The word már , for instance, no longer means already to me, no longer reminds me of break-ups or diagnoses, only that it means sea in Spanish. And I can even feel the sunlight in it, although I don’t speak Spanish. I still remember Goya though, or what Goya said in a film, that he should have had his hands cut off, after finishing one of his paintings. And the war, which he must’ve dreamt, but which I saw, where they cut off the hands of little boys, so they could not be forced to hold guns. As if that’s all hands were good for.

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