János Lackfi

János Lackfi Poems

János Lackfi Biography

János Lackfi is poet, prose writer and translator. He was born in 1971 in Budapest. Until now, he has published numerous books of poetry, two short novels, a novel and a book of prose; he translated more than twenty books into Hungarian. He also published children literature: two of his books received the award "Children's Book of the Year". János Lackfi lives in Zsámbék with his wife and his five children. Every year he takes part in more than a hundred literary readings around the country.)

The Best Poem Of János Lackfi

Granny in the pictures

I regularly show my friends
pictures of my Gran.
Ever since she has lived with us,
I have spent whole days
delighting in her bits of dottiness,
and I constantly take snaps of her,
from every possible angle
and in every possible situation,
then I have the nerve
to show them off to all and sundry.
It's childish of me, I know;
I know people laugh at me behind my back
for doing it, but I just can't help it.
Look here! Look how comic Gran is when she eats!
Smears it all over herself!
Her clothes get covered in cocoa;
she'll spit out a huge jet of tomato soup
all over the floor.
Ever since she worked out how to do it,
there's no stopping her. Isn't that charming?
And it‘s sweet the way she's
quite capable of turning the place upside down
in hunting for some old paper or other.
She's so feather-brained
we have our work cut out clearing up after her!
This one's of granny in the bathtub.
She cacked her sanitary towel
so she had to be scrubbed;
a real bunny rabbit, the way she's goggling!
Mind you, she always looks like then
when she isn't wearing her specs.
Yes, that's her false teeth on the side of the tub.
Such a scamp when she's smiling without the teeth in.
She talks, of course—all kinds of delightful stuff.
She calls cars limousines, trams electric tramcars,
talks about hansom cabs, bloomers and pomaded hair
—that's her vocabulary, those are the sorts of words she uses.
It's her way of explaining
what to her is the incomprehensible world of grown-ups.
It's such an odd feeling for someone
to be so dependant on me that it takes up my days.
Now I can't even imagine what it will be like
when she pops off, ten or fifteen years from now.

Translated by Tim Wilkinson

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