Poetry is the weeping eye
it is the weeping shoulder
the weeping eye of the shoulder
it is the weeping hand
the weeping eye of the hand
it is the weeping soul
the weeping eye of the heel.
Oh, you friends,
poetry is not a tear
it is the weeping itself
the weeping of an uninvented eye
the tear of the eye
of the one who must be beautiful
of the one who must be happy.

by Nichita Stanescu, translated by Thomas Carlson and Vasile Poenaru

I was so very aware
that the afternoon was dying in the domes,
and all around me sounds froze,
turned to winding pillars.

I was so very aware
that the undulant drift of scents
was collapsing into darkness,
and it seemed I had never tasted
the cold.

Suddenly
I awoke so far away
and strange,
wandering behind my face
as though I had hidden my feelings
in the senseless relief of the moon.

I was so very aware
that
I did not recognize you, and perhaps
you come, always,
every hour, every second,
moving through my vigil - then -
as through the spectre of a triumphal arch.

by Nichita Stanescu, translated by Thomas Carlson and Vasile Poenaru

Little by little she became a word,
bundles of soul on the wind,
a dolphin in the clutches of my eyebrows,
a stone provoking rings in water,
a star inside my knee,
a sky inside my shoulder,
and I inside I.

by Nichita Stanescu, translated by Thomas Carlson and Vasile Poenaru

Wrapped in the warm
prison of the bedsheets
a cold foot sneaks past
and dangles in the air at the
end of the bed

I shiver like sailors of old
in this cold wind that blows
across my toes

I wrestle the blanket
for the sleep it maintains
all elbows and thumbs
****** this way and that
restless wanderers of designer sheets

I shiver like sailors of old
in this cold wind that blows
across my toes

As I grumble
look to the clock
Four AM glares back at me
a cold foot wiggles
a cold foot waggles
Ode to be a cold foot
sorrowful tale to be sure

I shiver like sailors of old
in this cold wind that blows
across my toes

Japanese haiku
Distilled from simplicity
Essence of poet

Time
A crooked line
Connecting then and now
Never quite achieving the conjunction
That would build a bridge
To somewhere over there
And make a path to
What could be a better sometime
      ljm