I'm here. These texts these sacred carnivorous words
this verbal membrane
(read carefully I summon you read twice!) :
curtain meninx electroshock therapy
blanket straitjacket
bed-sheet ***** placenta

I praise this osmotic verbal membrane
I give you I get undressed I curse myself
Ah! my repressed whorish pathos:
I give you lucidly
Any poetic art is written in ink
(I calmly assure  in public)
in fact
in these mortal neurons

Darkness and dust

These texts these words I've picked from books and streets
Only this ultimate membrane
(precious like the *****
fragile like soap bubbles)
still separates me
from the psychic space where you've pushed me
                                             as towards the springs of the Nile
from the psychic place whence  I try - cautiously
painfully - to pull out:
my hands my paws my brain my heart
What is beyond? darkness and dust
What is left? a poetic art this darkness this dust
these cracking neurons

Marta Petreu
*translated by Liviu Bleoca

Between two ruins I built a house,
between two treason I planted a belief,
between two chasms  I set a table with napkins
                                                            and salt shakers,
between mountains of corpses I saw a saffron
                                                             and I smiled at it.
That is how I lived.  Can you understand now?
                                          That is how I lived.

Maria Banus
*translated by Dan Dutescu

Who is silent now, who speaks?
To whom?
Cinches of lead stifle the lungs
in long typographic nights.
Then beyond. On the blue, chymic flight.
In the space between words, in the fluid and phosphorescent body,
in the eternal field of alien light.

(The dawn which comes. Watery dawn in the diencephalon.
Red triangles dead center in the pupil of our time.
A continuous buzzing upon our tympanums. Excited
thoughts, irritated senses.
And no one comes here, to the utmost floor.
We're not afraid. We've got sharp blades
of steel, of silver, of copper. Delicate necks,
strong nails. Soul fully
at anyone's disposal.)

Who is silent now, who speaks?
And to whom?

Liviu Antonesei
*translated by Adam J. Sorkin and Ioana Ieronim

Stasis, but
              without death
out of the flower, fruit
grows deliberately
you shroud your hearing with
              the rustle
of the poplar practiced at being
               alone

fog like thinly sifting
              sand
hills rolling round and round
               as in a plasma
your other face which, in your departure,
                you forget

the woodpecker
pecks at the house
     of the ancient children

Aura Musat
*translated by Adam J Sorkin and Alexandru Pascu

I didn’t know you were here to stay... you’ve found a place to rest inside this chest. there is no one there, on the other side. why can I measure my life in pain-years?  I am going to listen to the weight of your step... we are so many... poor bodies with slaughtered desires. life lifts up gently like hypnotic steam from raw bodies while you growl inside my bones. you have thorns of truth and short sentences: “papa doesn’t love me”, “mama keeps cursing”, “I am useless”. you are the only thing alive since I insist to lay down in my mother womb over and over again. have me expelled, have me covered in a blanket of blood so that I do not see the future.  you keep giving birth to my selves.
stop looking at me with charcoal eyes, father
look, mother, you can have me silenced for the beauty of dawn

"I live not in myself, but I become
Portion of that around me..."
George Gordon Byron

"The bliss of man (could pride that blessing find)
Is not to act or think beyond mankind:
No powers of body or of soul to share,
But what his Nature and his state can bear."
Alexander Pope

"...body is but a striving to become mind... it is mind in its essence"
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"... insight that he in some sort possesses,
A privilege whereby a work of his,
Proceeding from a source of untaught things
Creative and enduring, may become
A power like that of Nature's."
William Wordsworth

"What am I? ?Nothing: but not so art thou,
Soul of my thought with whom I traverse earth,
Invisible but gazing, as I glow
Mixed with thy spirit, blended with thy birth,
And feeling still with thee in my crush'd feelings' dearth."
George Gordon Byron

"Imagination is a Divine Vision not of the World, or of Man, nor from Man as he is a Natural Man, but only as he is a Spiritual Man."
William Wordsworth

"Forthwith this frame of mine was wrenched
With a woaful agony,
Which forced me to begin my tale;
And then it left me free."
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"That awful Power"..."which unites clearness with depth, the plenitude of the sense with the comprehensibility of the understanding".*  * the creative faculty [my note]
S. T. Coleridge

Hello, brother
God is nobody’s toy
saying hello, the hardest part
while rifles are getting cold
and army of tears are passing through
I know you see this too
there is only one blood
one pain
one thirst for revenge even
same wind
different chill
different bow
different the choreography of laughter
and a patient god dormant
in the gentleness
of hearts

the sea is sighing like a woman
and I can hear its breath
of a hunted man
nearby yellow flowers
wild stones
salt drops stinging my arms
two seagulls dart out of my eyes
and fly side by side
speaking to each other over water
like human beings
in the absence of love

Carmen Firan
translated by Andrei Bantas

I'm passing through an autumn day
As through an enormous tear.
A fruit full ripe with perfume sweet
Sinks slowly slowly  to my feet.

I'm passing through the wind and light.
I've never known the reason why
Seasons gone remain as branches
In those unclaimed yet by the night.

Emil Brumaru
translated by Adam J. Sorkin and Sergiu Celac

everywhere there was darkness
high above it was dark
                    always it was dark
a syrupy darkness
       seeped into your mouth / stuffed your ears
slapped you across your eyes
you couldn't tell what direction
                 you might move in
a darkness of iron
     over hearts and minds
sometimes we chance upon each other / we shake hands
      with somebody / then somebody else
but the guillotine of cold
   abruptly cuts short
this beginning
the dark / always the dark
                       forever darker
over all things
in the soul / in the mind
on the earth
(the  darkness above darkness)

Cassian Maria Spiridon from City of Dreams and Whispers
translated by Adam J. Sorkin and Mihai Ursachi

It is you whom I love today. I love you with all my loves.*
Frida Kahlo

screaming gold and exulting light
I betrayed the sunset today
still life without promises the city
there comes that tone again
in the storehouses of flesh
where life dreams itself
you’ve colonized me
with hate and desire
unstable tempo
my eyes blind
like a storm without wind
I disfigured some light today
its unpretended beauty
no paradox
not even a surprise
I fall for these wounds, your burden
the taste of failure
the panic of not knowing
the trembling of your feet
no need for signifying something
for an ending or a touch
there is love without desire
desire without love
you can call me crazy
if this is all
you can say
at the end of the day

My flesh has become a candle
But I am a flame in a transparent sky,
Like dead birds,
I will weigh more than when alive.

The burning eye feeds on wax
and makes a few hot beads drip down
Once I learned to fly, once
I had proof, but I remember having flown.

My whole body is a candle
All will pass into dust in the end
The flame will melt into the blue
And you will feel the burn on your hand.

**Adrian Popescu

more than a meter away,
I sense the light as if it were a foreign
and endangered thing,
flesh over flesh in flesh under flesh,

and I think that it is only now that I begin to see it well,
only now is it binding as well as it should be,
a matter thicker than metal and heavier than water,
otherwise how could it sink to such great depths?

but what eye clearer than mine sees the light in itself,
with its black veins ready to burst,
darker than a placenta thrown in the garbage,
heavier than mercury when it explodes
and upon seeing it, what eyes will rotate
around it as if around an asphalt bucket?

with an eye such as mine you can’t see the light burning
instead you see its shabby structure,
its weight heavier than that of darkness.
only through the blind and useless eye, you see the unseen light,
the light which rots on Sundays in the yards,
too tired to go away,

the tiny wiry eye flowing after the light
sees what the seeing eye has never seen,
it’s not the matter which is heavy, but the light pressing it,
the eyes that break down are the only ones to see it,
who only sees the light does not see it.

yet who does not see it gathers it in big barrels,
over which they place burdock and stones
and keep it over the years, until it accumulates at the bottom
and hardens like rosin.
one day, in the astronomers’ telescopes
it will look like a dark and thick oil,
which they will use to rub their bodies.

and maybe then the eye, which only brings
bad luck to sight, will disappear.
when he sees with the skin, man will no longer be man
and the religion of retina will have long disappeared.
as long as god exists, he can’t be seen with sight
but then he won’t get away from us anymore.

he is part of the light that
the usual eye can’t see,
yet which my almost blind eyes sees.
from light upwards, things become harder and harder
and while you go up, you can’t go down anymore.
the great difficulty is in fact the easiness,
upon rising, you become the heaviness of the other world,
you crash in nothingness like a bag full of boulders.

man becomes heavy in the other world
because of the light: the venous light
the great luminous Carpathians from under the chest,
the sombre lights which thicken his bones.
who said man is not light?
truly man is light in the unseen,
a clot of lights, very weak ones.
few will be the things which
we haven’t seen because of the light,
this is only because light does not help us see
and anyway I have a bad eyesight
and through my limited glasses
I rather see the unluminous light.
and when the flesh will turn blind, they will also see
the fleshy light because of which we rot.

Ioan Es. Pop
translated by Flavia Hemcinschi

in thousands of aborted silences
of never found again words
in the nakedness of our failures
in the savage desire to be more than
the sight can bear
in the simple recognition
that you know little
from outside
we can listen to the allusive warmness
carving new bodies
for the days to come
for the healing of memory

we opened circles
minds
lungs
to embrace the new symmetry
of laughter:
I laugh when you cry
she cries when they laugh

and they pray:
no more
I won’t be your prey
your substitute
for the undiscovered
truth
take me as air on your palms
as dust in your wrinkles
smile with my tears

when silence is lighter than us
we only want to feel each other
in the mirror echoes
of a patient heart

this simplicity
of being
not afraid
to be caught
with wind
in your pockets

“Johnny's always running around
Trying to find certainty”*

you know this, don’t you?
I only knew you forward, unbearable
when I felt the foam of dawn
on your lips

and how wild fields bloom backwards
in the secrets of wind
in the culture of shame

that helpless zealous boy
with his eyes turned inwards
we are light and fiction
depending on the various proportions
in the geography of sight

we haven’t found out yet
the hidden geometry of thought
I’ve carried around this silently violent lover
an offering to the disappeared
to the void between your teeth

I never knew you

but your screaming point

What,
what shall I do with you?
My gipsy, my fix, my oyster, sea —
only a few spiritual members
gather in front of you, speechless:
my eyes, lips, *****, hands…
— And the heart, my love, where is the heart?
Here and here, and there, my love,
in every place
that your lips touch.

Amir Or from *Let's speak you

today is a bitter day
words are broken windows
poetry refuses itself

people turn their faces from each other
no crossroads for the wounded
looking for their bodies full of warmth
I am alone with my fragile heart
too many objects of perpendicular desire
and no purpose intrinsic to our birth

it's a normal day
some are sharpening their minds
dress up their desire
to use me

today is just another day
the world is devouring its fragments
in the quietness
of hearts

the weight of tears leaves no traces. apparently. pain has no axis of symmetry, but petrifying meanings. everybody must be afraid. there is no point. there is no point in the scream of windows, in the continuity of doors.
in a turbulent ray of light. this destructive force, the orphan desire of a child. its autistic strife. pain, the silent witness of unlived lives. streets keep their rhythm and pretend all is forgiven. rarely is. there are more pains than people. hear the steps in the geometry of desire.  reinvented desire to love. to let live.

every full stop is an abyss of breath.

Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.

For once on the face of the earth,
let's not speak in any language;
let's stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Fishermen in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,'
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.

Now I'll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.

from **Extravagaria

"thank you, my heart:
time after time
you pluck me, separate even in sleep,
out of the whole.”*

were I to perform
an autopsy of that morning
no verdict would be self-sufficient:
Love
bursting like a sudden dancefall
in my veins
your voice imparts shivering
to my plugged shadow
and the day goes offline
I offer my skin as a battlefield
for whispers
I wouldn’t compromise with
birds on wire
or diagnose my boundaries
when time is turned into gold dust
among your empty shirts
lodging the imploded silence
and your shaved smile
like a hurricane lamp

the word I hate most is
Love
it says nothing
nothing at all
about you
the hidden dimension
in my flesh
the shape of us
without mercy

so-in-time-so-inside or
as inside so in time
the plasma of thoughts far away
there in the spaces without meaning
the sprouts of faceless darkness
and systoles without time
I step from one silence into the other
and unshaped my body sings
I am babysitting my heart while the light loses its weight
on my shoulder
time is a pocket and I can hear only my blood

the luxury of mending this piece with that one
I am so complete when I am my feet
sometimes I don’t need a name
no need for one way roads
when quietly the dark sprouts me
and the days pass
without complaining

We are the terraced women
piled row on row on the sagging, slipping hillsides of our
                                                                                               lives.
We tug reluctant children up slanting streets
the push chair wheels wedging in the ruts
breathless and bad tempered we shift the Tesco carrier bags
                                                                          from hand to hand
and stop to watch the town

The hill tops creep away like children playing games

our other children shriek against the school yard rails
‘there’s Mandy’s mum, John’s mum, Dave’s mum,
Kate’s mum, Ceri’s mother, Tracey’s mummy’
we wave with hands scarred by groceries and too much
                                                                                   washing up
catching echoes as we pass of old wild games

after lunch, more bread and butter, tea
we dress in blue and white and pink and white checked
                                                                                          overalls
and do the house and scrub the porch and sweep the street
and clean all the little terraces
up and down and up and down and up and down the hill

later, before the end-of-school bell rings
all the babies are asleep
Mandy’s mum joins Ceri’s mum across the street
running to avoid the rain
and Dave’s mum and John’s mum – the others too – stop
                                                                                                for tea
and briefly we are wild women
girls with secrets, travellers, engineers, courtesans, and stars
                                                                                 of fiction, films
plotting our escape like jail birds
terraced, tescoed prisoners rising from the household dust
like heroines.

Pennyanne Windsor, from *Poetry 1900-2000 One hundred poets from Wales

There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.*
Leonard Cohen

the night birds
do want to be saved from light
in the land of whispers
the toll of complexity is
their unchanged lament
trapped between layers
insecure inside the semiotic square:
what is real?
true?
imaginary?
what is true and not true? – the call of destruction
this terror, the impossibility of meaning, shut inside the
drawer with plastic bags
we made my house there
somebody had to play the fool
these are reality games
recognition games
language games
with no key for the other’s syntax
who is the subject in this grave of flesh?
reality should be transactional
but the silence turned its face away instead
the clear bodies without voice rejoice
nobody asked the body how difficult it is to bear a mind
“we all know it’s not true & don’t you dare recognize it”
“you should be happy with your life & happiness doesn’t exist
(look at my poor body)”
“you are on your own & don’t you dare disobey”
“you must prove yourself & you are no good without us”

the right to reality was still not invented
since we are mostly busy deciphering our own language
words are self-fulfilling

I’m caring my annihilation safe
in the silence of nails
in the exhaustion of tools
of axes
and all the other love words

my love is an aborted child, I do not shed the same tears, only the same skin saddled with puzzles inside the intersection of presence and absence. the outcome of irrational congruence being yourself all day long is not enough you my pain don’t really matter to me silences fall between my fingers or was it too loud when I asked to be touched?  I am not able of speaking about love today with a mouth full of noises all hiding places are equal to themselves only you my pain defy definitions although they call me primitive.( theory says I am supposed to have grown up to live by the standards of a self-controlled open system)
but you my pain are well aware, I am still primitive, ultraviolent when I laugh, when I cry, when I refuse to let go of the ****** horizons, of foreign faiths, the end of all dying days, the mixture of their cravings and solitude
they are caring their bows in the honour of their truths my pain looks so pale among so many others. This is my pain in honour of your pain.  This is one way of loving the sellers of illusions yes, I have to own the arrest warrant for my heart someday

yes, this pain is a proud beggar

There flows between us on the terrace
an underwater light that distorts
the profile of the hills and even your face.
Every gesture of yours, cut from you,
looms on an elusive background; enters without wake,
and vanishes, in the midst of what drowns
every furrow, and closes over your passage:
you here, with me, in this air that descends
to seal
the torpor of boulders.
And I flow
into the power that weighs around me,
into the spell of no longer recognising
anything of myself beyond myself; if I only
raise my arm, I perform the action
otherwise, a crystal is shattered there,
its memory pallid forgotten, and already
the gesture no longer belongs to me;
if I speak, I hear this voice astonished,
descend to its remotest scale,
or die in the unsupportive air.

In such moments that resist to the last
dissolution of day
bewilderment endures: then a gust
rouses the valleys in frenetic
motion, draws from the leaves a ringing
sound that disperses
through fleeting smoke, and first light
outlines the dockyards.

…words
fall weightless between us. I look at you
in the soft reverberation. I do not know
if I know you; I know I was never as divided
from you as now in this late
return. A few moments have consumed
us whole: except two faces, two
strained masks, etched
in a smile.

**Eugenio Montale

for Stefana, Aurora, Alexandrina, Elisabeta, Lina and all the women in whose tired hands the sun used to set

I can only write this in my own language
maybe people don’t have a name of their own
or a time comes
this apparent abyss, incommensurable
in the **** of time
they didn’t live with duty free promises
I wonder how they dealt with the blood
with their naked arms
furious at stones
            woman-pillow
the earth knew how to be quiet between eyelids
the wind was superstitious
no rush into a smile
they couldn’t predict the lipstick
and the tantric love
curses cross bridges
and their hair would hide
                woman-wheel
back then the sunset was still happening
and maybe an eyebrow would raise
the duty to yourself was not yet invented
only beautiful hats, some scarfs
swallowed pains, unrecognized feelings
                woman-pillar
                 woman-child
their smoked skirts and rebellious step
they used to descend into their hands and into sweating
they never went out of the sun
not to disturb the wise colours or the needle work
when the bones of their men screeched
morning would come
and they wouldn’t have woken them up
not even the ignorant god of enduring
                woman-silence
I’m sitting in the mirage of dresses, perfumes, high heels
and their names are searching for me:
the night of the hunter is not over
I would kiss their hands
for a portion of wonder
of patience
love looks for the oneself
in the other

they were much more
much less than
a name
fading

A slight confusion
of earth with water
of water with sky
enough for life

to be lived

**Irina Mavrodin

Things distance themselves from one another
in a desperate halo
your loneliness is an echo,
rolled between my ribs.

The table is going round
The walls are bleeding
blood is pouring from the chair
where I sit back;
piles of clothes
like some famished birds
are collapsing from
a perpetually cold sky.

Nichita Danilov, from  *It Might Take me Years

There is no greater joy, body of mine,
than going out in the city at night
watching the halo of the moon bitten by a cloud
and the traffic lights changing their colours,
the car cutting the air,
seeing the flower thief
bloodying his hands
with the explosion of a rose,
being the absentee of your loneliness
and going beyond the power of your eye,
watching a whisper
rising from the trees
and how, while you are departing, it calls your name,
you creature of the Earth, you call your own name,
losing yourself, oh, body of mine,
towards the outskirts of the city, where
the darkened meadow of the night is itself a mourning
of time, where desire
gives you the thrills of an eternity.

Gellu Dorian, from  *It Might Take Me Years

When the hand which writes takes a rest
it seems to me demonically transparent;
beneath its skin, veins like a few plants
in a fishbowl — and the blood
flows within and floods
the silence; its murmur through time
the unlived life of the ancestors
rushing into the light of my eyes.

Dumitru Chioaru, from *It Might Take Me Years

My curves are not mad.
Henri Matisse, *Jazz

when silence gives away its name
birds become electric
darkness is no more a story
in their wooden beaks
I stay at the beginning of thought,
decelerate reality
again and again
bread, pain, blindness
truth visits me in my dreams
sometimes
between desire & dying
shortcuts, blind alleys
Shangri-La and Valhalla
Nirvana & the hunting ground
Guadalupe
untitled self-portraits
fast heights
blinds & shutters
Spinoza's abyss
the chasm of reason
Kant's please mind the gap
pits of harmony
barren grounds
Prigogine's broken circle
lost aesthetic qualities
and the bit moves on

when silence is an unfinished canvas
waters, faces make an offering
and their names grow
when I am confused with the possibility
of the sea level
then I know where
my love
is

splitting every single second
is beauty
unadorned
could I remove the decimal point
from my dying breath
?

This was the temptation:
to rub the I against the you,
our thought against its images.
To feel.

We were there before, you remember,
without mother or father, without navel,
marked only by the first cut.
Free of weight, measurement, destruction
we wandered inside each other, dreamt worlds,
lived.
But the stakes were too low,

the risk — only a game.
Desire was action,
instantly complete.
And that’s the way (remember?) we got here too:
by a single desire,
by a glance.

And now we’re here, in the viscous air,
rubbing this in, with effort —
every single sensation, every meeting.
Our suns rise and set,
our worlds get old,
but here:
suddenly we find
a new wrinkle in our soul,
and this — is for real. It’s real. Finally
we can lose, destroy,
finally we are alive.
For a moment
we can even die.

Amir Or, from *Let's speak you

In this vulnerable, resting, sunset light
the eye is thickened with shadow, deepened by absence.
Things hang in space, ground down by being seen, transparent —
and the mode they exist in now
is their mode of fading away.

The creating eye has weakened;
and the world that streamed — is almost already all sea;
whoever’s in front of me, behind me, at my side —
is me, but isn’t here.
And it’s already late. And the day’s over.
And we were left here, alone.

On the banks of the world
there we sat down, imploring our souls —
There we weep, eyeless,
when our gaze sinks into the great sea
and we suddenly remember
who we have been.

Amir Or, from *Let's speak you

things went accordingly
explosive by the book
consequently I found
pineful silhouettes
fossils of empty hands
floating poems
the boundaries of words
silk illusions or outrageous life
frozen layers of pain
pigments of pride
here is the splitting point
hey, don’t leave with me-crumbs
on your shoulders
I could make you the watchman of dreams
were they to loosen their grip

I am the daughter
of those serious people
without tears
the first flash of light-
the primordial invasion
violence against unformed space
a trapping container
I had to find escaping routes
from my mother’s womb
it chewed me out
it left me with no skin
so naked,  insane

I couldn’t try my birth before
only measure my pace
put it into question marks
spin around in memory-years
till it hit me that
I was so old
when I was born
not to hold on to
the vortex of wonder
the essence of reverie
the crest & zest of words
till I can make it
to the other side
of gravity

The fruits are ripe, dipped in fire, cooked
And tested here on earth, and it is a law,
Prophetic, that all things pass
Like snakes, dreaming on
The hills of heaven. And as
A load of logs upon
The shoulders, there is much
To bear in mind. But the paths
Are evil. For like horses,
The captive elements
And ancient laws
Of the earth go astray. Yet always
The longing to reach beyond bounds. But much
To be retained. And loyalty a must.
But we shall not look forward
Or back. Let ourselves rock, as
On a boat, lapped by the waves.

the sensation of
wet hair
in my teeth
pretty much your touch
your loving so heavy
words - a safe hell
in the soul's cavities
I'd recklessly counted
the fork's teeth
till my bones were spread
in the cemetery of years
no one confiscated
our competition for enduring
the snow of silence
finally bears some fruit
the impossible breath
urged me to save
some cement smile
till I can separate loneliness
from fresh dust
in my tired eyes

I must have been practicing
the patience of wood
the strife-wife
the brutal lemonade
on empty stomach

I
Again the larkspur,
Heavenly blue in my garden.
They, at least, unchanged.

II
How have I hurt you?
You look at me with pale eyes,
But these are my tears.

III
Morning and evening--
Yet for us once long ago
Was no division.

IV
I hear many words.
Set an hour when I may come
Or remain silent.

V
In the ghostly dawn
I write new words for your ears--
Even now you sleep.

VI
This then is morning.
Have you no comfort for me
Cold-colored flowers?

VII
My eyes are weary
Following you everywhere.
Short, oh short, the days!

VIII
When the flower falls
The leaf is no more cherished.
Every day I fear.

IX
Even when you smile
Sorrow is behind your eyes.
Pity me, therefore.

X
Laugh--it is nothing.
To others you may seem gay,
I watch with grieved eyes.

XI
Take it, this white rose.
Stems of roses do not bleed;
Your fingers are safe.

XII
As a river-wind
Hurling clouds at a bright moon,
So am I to you.

XIII
Watching the iris,
The faint and fragile petals--
How am I worthy?

XIV
Down a red river
I drift in a broken skiff.
Are you then so brave?

XV
Night lies beside me
Chaste and cold as a sharp sword.
It and I alone.

XVI
Last night it rained.
Now, in the desolate dawn,
Crying of blue jays.

XVII
Foolish so to grieve,
Autumn has its colored leaves--
But before they turn?

XVIII
Afterwards I think:
Poppies bloom when it thunders.
Is this not enough?

XIX
Love is a game--yes?
I think it is a drowning:
Black willows and stars.

**
When the aster fades
The creeper flaunts in crimson.
Always another!

XXI
Turning from the page,
Blind with a night of labor,
I hear morning crows.

XXII
A cloud of lilies,
Or else you walk before me.
Who could see clearly?

XXIII
Sweet smell of wet flowers
Over an evening garden.
Your portrait, perhaps?

XXIV
Staying in my room,
I thought of the new Spring leaves.
That day was happy.

each tree is
a sound soft-spoke

to unwheeled sky
perhaps

or passing
cloud ― i would set

mind as
these trees: closeset &

filigree
like something once hubbed

& radial staked
out : taken root & grown past

its paring
having absorbed what heat

comes in to build a year-by-
year body

encompassing body: mind so
still in its s-

hell as to
be

detectable
barely till my

tomb stone
deep in upward shadow

leaps upon
me like a child around my neck

Mario Petrucci from *i tulips

Or you, father, pointing down to a Sicilian harbour ―
its dark pincers compressing an eye-glass
of water

Or my skin, watered down by a lifetime out of your sun
yet thick and dark through our blood’s long curing
in white light

Or your silhouette, insect-strange on the black breast
of a Northumbrian hill, our kinship of shape lost
in the white flood-down
of summer

Or that sequoia glade whose green we drank: a tall glass
where dark sank as heavier spirits do, and stirred leaves
made a white effervescence
of sunlight

Or you, black and white, slumped in that wicker chair
mourning your father, steeped in a kitchen’s shadowless
fluorescence, toe-caps scuffed grey
by the glare

Or rain, elsewhere, as white horizons laddered with dark ―
rain as fault-lines slanting the light ― till, here, resolve
the first cold drops, steaming on your curved
back of earth

Mario Petrucci from *Flowers of Sulphur

I came home pointlessly
endlessly
that day
the windows didn’t confess
I didn’t recognize anything
no, no more
I nailed myself on walls
-nothing really helped-
I sat on my bedside
facing the voracious truth of flesh
while my dresses were exploding
in the wardrobe
my furious love
erasing sunrise
between me and my skin
an alarming desire
happened that day
to clear the view
the life I’d smuggled
and hid away
the sons and daughters of darkness
were calling each other
in my hips
I put some makeup on my shoes
ready to face the world like this
woman
beast
no need to panic
there’s only this desire
unredeemed
to give away
a heart full of dire

I became one
with the other
another me
while
you were
beautiful
like a free day

it had to start somewhere
Odysseus never came home
only chaos promised to return
the dome of illusion will be (ful)filled
with stones
the mutual game of deception is over
the pride of the mountains collides
with itself
the rise of irony in history
the decay of fists
awaits dignity to play
one more card today
chaos chooses its roots
beneath the surface
inside millennia
of looking over the sea

godless promises await
mundane
a fresh horizon
of pain

but I knew its walls ripe with the hate of an ancient dampness
and the ceilings leaking and the floor quaking with hatred
and the neighbours lurking at the windows, to see what happens in our house.

four generations have hated in here incessantly, no one escaped it.
at our house, hatred acts like a replacement for icons,
food and beverage. without hatred,
Sunday pours over as turbid as lye.

in the beginning it was, maybe, just the hatred of one
deprived of love, but later, for those that followed,
it became a natural hatred, a
homely feeling, our title of nobility
and for some time now none of us has taken any comrade
but the one that he or she could hate the most.

especially at night, when the ending is close,
hatred nestles in its bedtime garments, bleeds between the sheets,
all night we turn from one side to the other
with our eyes focused in the dark to the other's bed.

the children have already learned it, know that nobody sleeps,
listen with their eardrums swollen by strain how the hatred crawls,
with the noise of a heavy spider, from one bed to another.
now it packs one into another and quakes, and from them
here comes a fresh smell of frozen dampness.

this nonetheless only for a few months, two-three years at most,
after which their blood
gets darker and the hatred sends down into them a somber conceit
and then we recognize them as being of our kind.

when I was born, I was born for this:
to take the hatred further, to throw it into children -
I do not matter, none of us matters,
only the hatred we pass on from one to the other matters.
we marry out of hatred. we make children out of hatred.
they must hate in their turn, because otherwise,
our more than a century-long heritage will go to waste.

and if we were not to hate, those prepared for it since childhood,
it would spread among you and we must be very careful,
because our regular doses may **** you,
although nobody can be sure that life
is just life.

Ioan Es. Pop
Translated by Anca Romete

“To live is to be slowly born.”*

that day
time reversed its memories
the interior waters were protected
the autumn fruits were quiet
in their sweetness
some joy was scudding by
leaving shy traces on the cheeks of the city

who called you?
not my screams
they were trapped in someone else’s
purposes
fear, indifference, emptiness, hate
were in the middle

you  were a passionate thief of glances
there had been many before
each time blood rushed inwards
you had a secret collection of lost heads

suddenly it started
my right hand started
to strip you of your dreams
my right ear kept the pace
in the colorful space
I didn’t mean to pry
into the tension of your jaw
saying “I am”
(thinking real hard)
into your frowning with your lips
and the intense split growing in the middle
pushing you and yourself apart
the uncertainty of your feet
ready to take off

it is fear
dissolving my presence
my skin stopped recognizing myself
every inch has a voice
I was disarmed
I descended into yourself
and you offered to me
my own mystery

Picasso was watching over our shoulders
to Degas’ ballerinas
hinting at the lack of faith
in your smile
-there are so many spaces
filled with non-sense,
I know-

I turned into a landscape of desire
with perfumed weeds
there was an ocean of eyes
between us
wonderful images rolled over my skin
what was your chest crushing?

to be or not to be engulfed
still a lottery
our preoedipal mothers were pointing
their fingers at the horizon
pain turning into more pain
turning into hate turning
into hope
this heaviness in the middle
their laughter and innuendo
heavy as a tomb stone

that day never came
when you had me
without hello
no theory convinced me
to understand
this centering love I feel
every time your smile
happens to me

dreamers never say
“I’m sorry”
just leave me there
I'll be consumed
one day

this light carries a secret desire
to bring the horizon nearer
to bear more hearts
more screams
the violence of breaking barriers
invisible forces of cohesion of dismantling
are playing in the innocence of an unborn language

their gestures interrupted by thoughts escaping tired bodies
their gestures flow into strange voices
to be is something
to be loved is everything
to love is still a mystery
how to hold on to your heart
as to wild horses

the principle of uncertainty
when there were no corners
not yet
the energy of thought
preformed
the roots of leaves
preconditioned
the land of images without boundaries
I was the king of taste
this vessel took
changing forms
each minute
I was one with my hand
with my towels
with the red cube
of desire
I want was enough
to destroy
the names of dawn
this vessel knows the route to chaos
our guarding mother
take me in your sighs
hold me somewhere
in the sleeves
of thought
let's do it
let's feel one last bit
of the pulsing wreckage
we are full of promises we made
to ourselves
to take the route
to the next level
of ecstasy
we need a container
let's do it
let's chase the semantics
away
what remains is
the fruit of day

smaller than the table, smaller than the chair,
smaller than my father’s big boots.
like a potato, that is how small I dreamt myself.
because in spring, they put the potatoes
in the ground and that was it,
till autumn they were not disturbed any more.

I dreamt myself in the planting pocket, among them,
sleeping sweetly in the darkness,
turning on either side in summer
and then falling asleep again.

and to wake up in autumn still sleepless
and unclean like my brothers
and when it is time to dig us up, to jump above
and yell: stop digging, stop digging,
for I shall willingly come home,
if you put me back in spring,
and in spring I am the first one
to be thrown back in the planting pocket
and so on, to always stay and sleep,
from the planting pocket to the basement and from the basement to the planting pocket,
for many years, deeply asleep and forgotten.

Ioan Es. Pop
translated by Beatrice Ahmad

when I carry you in my lips
I forget about my heels
eating cherries like a mademoiselle
(also called mademoiselle Chanel)
I don’t have to look in the mirror
there is summer in their look


you came to inhabit my lips
and the colours of words starve blinded
traffic lights repeat what they have seen
you will find your way over there
to the old carnival
inspiration of the living
no one dares to touch me
I am too much of an electrified cage

this woman wants to give herself to you
with the most natural lack
of grace
you can pray with my lips
for the rest of the day

it was not too late for some metaphors
I was trying to sleep
when the air said:
“I will take him from you,
and give him back
randomly
and white butterflies will grow
in your hair”

“he will have himself
that’s what matters”,
I said to myself
while time was left dreamless
and some butterflies
were carrying the sea
to the roots of sleep

words are a breaking through
from non-linearity of colours
hard to endure the abyss of green
the mind produces the world in excess
extending thought to the point of boiling
a breath of fresh air comes from the other side
a struggling music in the streets
cracked with wanting
sometimes it rains with desire
and neuroticised eyes
the politics of need is coined
in the land of no answers

I am an orphan of desire
my rightful eye is busy
farming for myself
new territories
the master and the slave are linked
by nails
and watery hopes

forget your words
there is silk over waters
there is more space
for immersion

I am an orphan
without my desire
to love
all the siren calls
devouring thoughts
of you