Coach for Butterflies

 

We’ve got so few axles

for our body’s wheel of flesh.

“Where are you wending your way, coach for butterflies ?

Where are you wending your way ?”

…The coach crosses the main square.

I rush behind it, shedding tears.

I ask the grass, “Has the coach come this way ?”

The grass makes no reply.

I ask the trees, “Haven’t you seen any butterfly in the coach ?”

The trees remain silent and drop some yellow leaves.

“Lord God, has the coach passed me by ?

Oh, Lord, how can I catch it up ?”

“Follow the track of blood, you fool!”

replied the blind beggar.

 

Sign 23

 

Like a black bird on a white egg

there I am yearning for you

like a white bird on a black egg

there I am yearning for you

like nobody on nothing

there I am yearning for you

like nobody’s on nobody

there I am yearning for you.

White black, white black

how ardent is my yearning for you

cracked bird and winged egg

Oh Lord, how deep my ardent yearning for you!

 

English version by Gabriela PACHIA

Petre STOICA

 

Who

 

Who steps into the childhood’s forest nowadays any longer

Snow White was strangled by the dwarfs

the dwarfs grew into ogres proclaiming themselves marshals

and contending with each another they died gloriously

who lights cemetery lanterns for flowers nowadays and

who nurses the radiation-stricken animals

the does collapse by the wolves and the wolves

kneel by hares only the wild boars

are still running defending their dignity with their tusks

the ravens weep and recite peace manifestoes

and the forest is paved with skulls the hyacinth

grows unhampered from the earth of the black orbits

Snow White was strangled by the dwarfs

he who says that he suckles belladonna is a clown

and hoaxes us unto death

however the one who treasures the mystery within a tear

realises that the childhood’s forest

has been drowned in a bucket of drawing ink

 

English version by Gabriela PACHIA