I'm in no hurry,
I'll let time pass by.
Each second as it drops
Bit by bit erodes
Suffering.
I'll be patient.
Each wave that breaks
Is rasp to the rock.
On which I'm bound,
Each speck of rust
Thins the chain.
In just a millennium, or two,
The rock will become sand,
The iron links fine powder,
My bones calcium molecules
Dissolved in water,
Suffering nothing.

By Ana Blandiana, translated by Adam J. Sorkin

the song of birds measures the air
the buds of the future are fragile
what a fate - not a rhyme:
the eyelids are filled with light

a paradox, perhaps you'd say
imagination frees reality
what if it's the other way round:
reality frees imagination

my lips forget your ironies
waters feel your surrender
the rush hour of something ineffable knows
you are caressing the back of the light
your words are crispy and salty

I emigrate into a silence that keeps its promise
I'll learn your steps like the worm learns the apple
or the sea learns the depth

light learns colour from its carbon dreams

the hours bloom in the ebb of flowers
these bones are branches of a thought without signature
who thinks for my blood, my soles or hands
the hands feel to fill up the void of thoughts
who listens to the rhythms of life
who cares to know the decay of truth the reality of feelings
the ghetto of the mind breaks the world into unvindicated stories
we jump into the sky as if into a revolution
we traverse our nature from one end to the other

let's mix the unknown of our thoughts
let's  dequantify, step out of our center
a disputed sky is carrying its weight
who is going to...
fill the torture chambers with the echo of dreams
let poetry vindicate all tears
look brutality in the eye, thought's fermentation
we see the world through our wounds
the magnitude of being alive cancels sunsets
history recycles uncertainty, our necessary hands

we strive to redeem the hiatus of colours

light lingers on stones
I love to be a spectator
women's hair hallucinates sunflowers
time is hitting the walls
today our ribs/smiles don't hurt
these pavements are the custodians
of wind's secrets
our eyes see without effort
a strange divination possesses this journey
from egg to coffin

light travel through us as if through
an ocean of bones
a poem dreams its exile into words
the trees let us see the seeds of time
we confuse happiness
with the boutique of dreams
and that's alright
some magic was saved on Noah's ark

springtime smells of women's hands
a young man conjures an intact eden
silence is grinding the air
at the end of things, the root of water

a mistery as whole as any other
this fresh earth of spring
sometimes we say woman

I smile at tired women and
they smile back at me
I smile at beautiful women and
few of them don't  really need
my wondrous eyes

they know the weight of a hand,
the flame of dance, the duty to care
they know what a dress is
especially in an embrace
they know oblivion, mischief,
the rage of hours, the hours of blood,
the tearful line between
reason and passion

they don't ask who they are
when the sun is round like
the womb of words
and the heart a volcano
of quietness

There can be no society without poetry, but society can never be realized as poetry, it is never poetic. Sometimes the two terms seek to break apart. They cannot.

Octavio Paz, from Signs in Rotation