Fortresses, Archipelagoes, Oceans

Wherever your pathways may take you,

you come across fortresses, archipelagoes, oceans

and blazes on peaks.

You caress women with arms of lava in summer’s scorching heat.

You bring forth children on the earth, under the clouds and the sun.

You wring unrevealed arcana from nature.

You compel chimeras to take shape, you devise foundations and laws,

you engender history, you lay the groundwork for empires,

and throbbing throughout the meridians

you feel that you exist all day and all night.

Nevertheless, there comes a time when, as if at a sign,

in the abysmal depths of your soul, you desert them all,

your face upturned, your eyelids closed − you desert them,

seemingly still invoking them wordlessly − you desert them.

How can it be

that you should behold the moonlight at one time

and eventually you should betray it,

stepping into the darkness ?

A Song in the Night

Stones stand in my passway, forever stones.
No one’s in the darkness to guide my steps.
On my way to reach you, no stepping stones

would care to help me climb to your doorsteps.

Stones are strewn all around, forever stones.
On the long pathway of my heart’s desire,
the stones’ Lord God would not yield to my tones,

He would not yield so He would still conspire.

My road is long, the hour’s even longer.
I pray Heaven, oh I pray fervently,
that the Moon should care to help glowingly
so I might walk through and reach you stronger.

The Versifier

Even when I write original stichs

I merely translate.

I deem it more than befitting.

Only thus does the stich find good reason

to fulfill itself and blossom.

I translate at all times. I translate

into the Romanian language

a song which my heart imparts to me

suavely murmuring, in its own language.

English version by Gabriela PACHIA