ETERNAL ABUNDANCE

 

Wrapped in creepers, in ivy,

in an eternal abundance,

huge statues of copper, marble and jade,

fallen in the depths of the jungle;

we shall lie down at the end,

knowing we shall vanish,

with our artful, merry eyes sparkling

from the wisdom of the journey.

With our hands touched by the jungle,

by the eternal abundance,

which have turned a little green, a little cool,

we shall wave at you playfully, relaxed,

– oh, yes, we know we are improvising

and this gives us peace! –

you, bird who pass and no longer carry us off,

you, clear knife who fly

and no longer seek to cut us off from our honey

where all the sciences and colours lie confuse,

only your back,

forced by our greeting,

will light up like a sign of pallid light

towards our faces veiled in jests,

and we laugh and laugh, muffled with grass,

because it is true

that all we say is heard!

 

 

GOLDEN BIRD

 

I love you, golden bird,

you burn and splash with an invisible tar,

and force me to fall, my hands covering my eyes,

without being able to avoid the black blows of tar

you are throwing at me to burn me,

when my fall is transformed into beauty,

and my knees make the air, heavy as water,

tremble in fan-like moves,

and unleash, from the depths, the colours of the rainbow

which terrify me with their splendour,

and it happens to me that I fall into black and small places

which you are lighting for me like this

in your pallid brightness –

and I see in the light of the law,

forgetting that it has been just chance,

when I sit in coolness and peace

and, in my mind, a lighthouse opens slowly

and pulsates far away,

you make me see things and more things,

and I raise my eyes,

confident, lost and radiant,

towards you!

 

THE ARMY OF LITTLE BEINGS

 

We are the small creatures, an army

knowing their family tree,

and we are welcoming you as guests in our house

and in our purity, ready

for everything which is different from us.

We smile at any unfamiliar thing,

happy for all the gifts

which are being prepared

– as we always put things in order.

Guests, do not fret over not knowing this place;

we can move stoves away and remove the tree bark,

and we can dig out the ancestors’ portraits,

slightly sweating, with eyes that burn and move to tears

even the walls of our houses,

to give you old and halo-bearing wine and fruit,

to show you the river flowing under our cellars;

its waves are the streams of mingled things breathing,

where nothing we can imagine is missing

and we can draw out anything you remember;

we will surely do it with our eyes closed,

because it was not lost, and for us

death never exists in the substance of the world,

perhaps only in its mind, as you will be able to

witness the birth of history and science,

from our hearts, around the fire, when we cut up

ripe pumpkins. Memory is our fire;

Our trees are burning with heavy, dark, smoking fruit,

because they spring out from the earth of remembrance,

and our eyes are purple-gold because we do not realize

where the past stops, and each step takes us forward,

the vanguard of whirlpools of sleep, arisen from the memory

which envelops us in light, but also in fatigue and death,

our eyes suffering from the disease of creatures, just as the earth groans, constantly taking different forms, the birds of memory spreading out their wings and folding them

during the night, and each morning opens in wonderful and feverish tinsel – white, cooling camphor of pain and panic of the creatures that tremble,

the earth in our palm starts to fret, to sigh,

to concentrate its nature.

Do not believe in the tenderness and clumsiness of these places;

every hill has the fixed contours

 

of a science collapsing loose

under the burden of its own profundity, the body

of a soldier dozing while his arms

swing around unconsciously, pure and strong.

Our games are cautious and are unleashed

in plaited garlands of words foliage;

in their depths time is well hidden, unhurried like gold,

imbuing the land. Each place is a heavy word,

uttered by a mouth which weighed it at leisure

on an island in the middle of deserted seas. In the evening can be seen

the shape of every place, with a creature nesting in it,

that fits it, squatting happily sheltered.

Our landscape is full of nostalgia…

 

 

IN THE MIND OF THE WORLD

 

Do not try to look again and again

for the same thing you no longer recognize,

it is enough that you saw just once

the small, golden creature − a fruit of autumn,

running impelled by a joy

forever mysterious; all

that was new has gone. Don’t strive

to find out anymore. Fear

no more. In autumn they are all

brothers and they look at each other

from the battlements, waving hands.

From now on, only friends will come,

their words will radiate good wishes.

Perhaps, convinced like this,

you will be slightly strange, your black hair

will frighten the ignorant passing

by the walls with their heads

buried in furs,

still calling death that thing

which happens only in the mind of the world.

 

 

THE LAUGHTER OF LITTLE BEINGS

 

To have a place of your own,

in a magical cellar,

where you laugh among

old petrified mugs,

unshaken by wind, water or lichens,

To knit a giant scarf there,

full of beings –

it only happens

that each day comes childishly,

twisting its naive little body –

and the scarf will catch in its waves

every appearance,

which will be a bird upwards,

backwards, it will show up

in the form of a crumbling clod

or stone flower,

only laughter is eternal,

a fairy-tale place

full of elves, beetles and children

playing fast

with cannon balls,

in the scarf which weaves itself

alone in the night.

 

 

KINDNESS

 

You will lie down like lizards,

startling with pleasure in your sleep

at every sound of brass, of trumpet,

until kindness will electrocute you,

making you see, amazed,

in a deep, soundless night,

a white being

holding all power in its hand,

white and childish,

but precise as a jewel

filigreed in silence,

with generous love.

Kindness will be a force,

you will be ashamed during that night watch,

and in the morning, happy,

you will pass into wilderness, forgetting.

 

 

EVERYTHING WILL SLOWLY TURN

 

One day the little beings will open for us

the gates of great houses and will invite us in,

where the light will come out slowly,

through doors always open to other doors,

revealing rich, generous and sealed worlds,

fruits of a metamorphosis

between anthracite, mahogany and cinnamon.

Each energy will wait in silence and in the breeze,

embodied by an object:

a tom cat

coiled on the sofa, a set of beautiful tiles

in the corridors.

The little beings will not ask about what

will be, they will not have lumps of energy

with which they will not know what to do.

When time asks for changes,

everything will slowly turn, the doors will slowly close,

the beings will peacefully pass through something else,

shadows penetrating mahogany, anthracite, cinnamon.

 

 

 

SILENCE AND RECOLLECTION

 

A lot of silence and recollection

are needed by the little beings,

as they lead their lives undulating

under greenish waters,

covered by a pink, silk light,

when they say their names

just like a breath,

hurriedly moving through the northern and greenish water,

as if they would go

to increase the wealth of a granary –

they will only show half their face

animated, covered in great waves,

of the soft light of a yellow sun,

which will consume itself without speech,

on their cheeks.

 

 

LITTLE BEINGS RESTING

 

With their menacing gentleness,

the little beings are dozing in the meadow,

with their eyelashes as gold as beehives

from which time’s bees are flying delicately.

It is enough to raise a hand from the grass

and there will be night, or there will be word,

without crying, without laughing because of this,

without getting tired, without gasping for air,

only the hand, a pearl trembling in the wind,

will rise through the striped air

there will be shadow, there will be light, in turn,

columns in the air, fearing, listening

to the hand which will wait in a living stillness,

through which the blood can be heard pulsing −

and it will be done as they said,

there will be night, or there will be word.

 

 

THEY WILL CONTINUE TO BE LIFE’S FOUNDATION

 

The little beings

will continue to be life’s foundation,

whispering their fresh and frail name,

a name like a rising breeze under waters,

they will keep on working

on their notebooks with marks

and catches of hieroglyphs,

as if they were going after butterflies;

the heavy moulds will tremble in their hands,

soft metal letters, delicate swarms,

will seep into waters in the evening,

when, side by side, the ploughs

begin to cut into nebulae,

and women go out from warm places into the field,

with soft metal earrings in their ears,

and they are breathing, tall;

their soft, fiery hair flutters

in the sour night.

 

Translated from the Romanian by Adriana-Ioana Minculescu Nacu, Martin Potter and Simona-Grazia Dima