Nichita STÃNESCU

The Defamation of the Evil

I forge the mystery
more than I worship it.
I make bricks for the house walls
the word I utter is set on the table
and served as food

When my burial time comes
they will notice a child in a deep slumber
unwilling to rouse from his sleep.
Only when all my kinsfolk have accomplished
their passage may the autumn start its rotting ways,
brightened and rootful.
Oh light, uprise and return home
oh eyes, may your anguish of being alive
come true.
In tranquility, more soundless than in all our lives
we shall awaken in a colour and that will be blue.

 

A Narrated Melody

The love which I felt for you those days

rendered me an almost handsome man.

My thoughts could encompass the horizon

and I even

handled my thoughts which reached the sun.

 

You were so slender, and your black mane

was fluttering over your shoulders.

When you spoke, your voice could kill spectres,

and my heartbeat would revolve around you

gravitating like a lingering planet…

 

Now,

when the blessed moment

has brought you on my path,

my sun is darkening,

and the vault displays its glossy stars,

so that my strenuous thoughts might grasp the stars !

 

 

Knot 3

My eyes would no longer shed tears
but eyes, −
my eye sockets would unceasingly give birth to eyes, −
to quieten dow, if only I could quieten down.

 

“Oh,” I screamed,
“my arms,
cease shedding arms !”

 

“Oh !” I screamed,
“my body, cease shedding bodies !”

 

“Oh,” I screamed,
“my life, cease shedding life !”

 

I overshadowed myself
yet under the shroud
there clutteringly rolled down
eyes, arms, bodies, my life.

 

The Dragonfly Eater

I eat dragonflies because they are green

and have black eyes,

because they have two pairs

of transparent wings

because they fly without a noise

because they have no idea who made them and why

they were created

because they are exquisite and suave,

because they have no idea why they are exquisite and suave ;

because they can’t speak and because

I am not certain they can’t speak

 

I eat dragonflies because I dislike

their taste,

because they are poisonous and

because they sicken me.

 

I eat dragonflies because I can’t understand them,

I eat them because I am contemporary with them

I eat them because at first I tried to eat

my own hands

and they were infinitely more sickening,

I eat them because I tried

to eat my tongue

my own tongue of flesh

and to my apallment I noticed

it had shed its greenish,

black-eyed words,

far from me, for the sake of hunger.

 

English version by Gabriela PACHIA