"In paradise the work week is thirty hours
salaries are higher prices always dropping
physical labor is not tiring (because of lower gravity)
chopping wood is like typing
the social system is stable the government moderate
it's certainly better in paradise than in any country

At first it was supposed to be different
luminous circles choirs and rungs of abstraction
but one couldn't separate body from soul
precisely enough and the soul would arrive
with a drop of blubber a thread of muscle
one had to compromise
mix the grain of the absolute with the grain of clay
still another falling away from the doctrine the ultimate one
only John foresaw it: the resurrection of the body

God is seen by few
exists only for those made of pure pneuma
the rest listen to communiqués about floods and miracles
in time all will see God
when this is to take place nobody knows

In the meantime Saturday at noon
the sirens roar sweetly
and heavenly proletarians come out of the factories
carrying their wings awkwardly like violins"

Zbigniew Herbert
translated by Oriana Ivy

"Bring me the sunflower so I can transplant it
to my earth scorched with salt,
so it can display all day to the azure mirrors
of sky the anxiety of its yellow face.

Dark things stretch towards brightness,
bodies exhaust themselves in a flow
of colours: this in music. To vanish
is thus the hazard of venturing.

Bring me the plant that leads
where blond transparencies rise
where life dissolves like essence;
bring me the sunflower crazy with light."

*Eugenio Montale

i am not stable
i am not wild
i am not simple
i am not mild
i'm only dreaming
about the mystery
i received
when i was born
a child

i am not yours
i am not mine
i'm only a letter
in the alphabet
of time

The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am,
then I can change.*
Carl Rogers


my hands can be so prosaic
uninterrupted in the mechanism of gestures
mindless, blinded, tired
of polishing the edge of the world

your hands and their delicate shiver
are used to behaving
trying to learn how to grasp the meaning,
the contours of the void in daylight
or why haters hate
(was it your fault or theirs?)

you are an unfinished landscape
of breaking points and hopeless moans,
oases of quietness,  turning points and
electrical paths, buds of mystery
I know nothing about

still, there’s something  teasing
written in between
such is coherence:  a paradox
-two interlocking  unwittingly-
irrational at one level
imaginatively reasonable at another
-reality is framed by negotiation with a god of silence-
two singularities conversing,
filling the air with space  
: it is me⁢ is you
Like when you erase me perfectly
with a blink of an eye
tired or cynical
with yourself,
or when I crush you
like a manic avalanche in
midsummer day

-there is some madness in between-

after all
shame and shamelessness
cannot be understood
in binary codes
while humility and pride
are two faces of the same coin

it’s been written  since day one
this matching choreography of turmoil inside
or just the pursued birth pains of self
-switch, twist, push, turn,
run, hide, split,
break, slip, cut
repeat, repeat, repeat –
the vertigo of life
rhyming imaginary possibilities
new gestures,
new proportions of light
and darkness
in the power of my hands
in the clarity of your voice

we approximate the truth of our last breath
grow old in stories within stories within the story
we tell ourselves to survive the crack of dawn

and so it goes:
the hero decrypting sunset
deepens the story
looking for
some freedom
to be

and I cannot look at you
without
the sonorous light
bearing tenderness
within

I set you free
in my blood
without knowing
if you stay
for today

somehow
you accelerate me
to the heat
of ripe apples,
to a brand new smile,
to the pressure of an ocean
in my veins,
to this raw primordial dance
-when you run I follow
when I stay you pray-
to the purity of a winter’s day
naked of illusion

somehow I let you in
ravished by white pigeons
drawing ineffable circles
in the depth of a sky

there is light in this silence:
you accelerate me
beyond myself
and I could die
like a woman

yeah, the sun, the moon,
the craving, the coffee in the morning,
thesis, antithesis, synthesis
the old dream out in the open
and the girl who doesn't say "I love you"

she's whispered in the mist
of unknown cities
devoted
en pathos
(like the priestesses of the old temples)
young horses measuring the
silence between words
hello, says the devil

and the sun and the moon,
the craving follow unknown routes
she's having her coffee black
in an imaginary morning
holding the synthesis of "I do"&"I don't"
(love you fiercely)

her shadow is passing
with the wind
between memories
chasing the shape of
tomorrow

"no distance
for your words

a breath a voice a presence a force
coming straight
reassured

touching my nakedness
under my clothes"

**Ioana Ieronim

suddenly I need to find you
and I do not know how to do that
where

the paths across land and water
teasing

hidden and mute
Time revolves
with its slow quickness
quick
slowness

grain of sand upon grain

until I happen
just happen
to remember
myself

and there
you are

Ioana Ieronim, **The Lens of a Flame

silence
shimmering with the embers
of unspoken words

silence
molding the air like clay

silence that touches
with the clarity of its language,
with its glow
under the skin

your silence
stronger than the noisy city
that I am crossing today

Ioana Ieronim, **The Lens of a Flame

today you died one more time
before words -
they dissolve migrant birds,
their shadows carry the sky

it's not enough
you're watching me
with tango movements
my desire, your birth tonight
and the chronicle of a redeemed body

it's you again
drawing my tomorrow uninvited
in this frame of reference
we are not symbiotic lovers
but fearful whispering prayers,
one blank sun,
the remains of a sea,
some irrational numbers...

let me
have me
spin me
hold me
spill me
water me

reinvent me

never leave me
who I used to be

The nature of infinity is this: That everything has its
Own Vortex, and when once a traveller thro' Eternity
Has pass'd that Vortex, he perceives it roll back behind
His path, into a globe itself infolding like a sun,
Or like a moon, or like a universe of starry majesty,
While he keeps onwards in his wondrous journey on the earth,
Or like a human form, a friend with whom he liv'd benevolent.
As the eye of man views both the east & west encompassing
Its vortex, and the north & south with all their starry host,
Also the rising sun & setting moon he views surrounding
His corn-fields and his valleys of five hundred acres square,
Thus is the earth one infinite plane, and not as apparent
To the weak traveller confin'd beneath the moony shade.
Thus is the heaven a vortex pass'd already, and the earth
A vortex not yet pass'd by the traveller thro' Eternity.

from The Illuminated Prophetic Books  **Milton

I'll wear the seduced horizons
and you'll drug me with silence
or rhyme bossa nova in my blood

air, tears, poetry, color
just names for the hunger of that space
in between my train of thoughts
when it happens -
the scent of you in the morning
and dried flowers in your eyes
it's just...
the hand forgets the handle
and the feet unlock the weight

soon baby, soon
there will be something singing
when skies are flowing
and wonders can/should/might
give me some
of your bright

desire has no mercy
like a red morning light
tickling your feet
it has me transparent
it has me transformed
into roar, thunder, wave
or quicksand in your hands
till the air in between
is fully charged,
radioactive
and insane

every man has his island,
his hiding places projected out loud
with blood power,
vernacular dreams &
ventriloquist voices.
among other things, madness -
an optical illusion
what you see is what you are
or seeing is believing
insideman and outsidemen
undifferentiated
the room has one view
on patched windows
indesire cutting deserted canyons
for the self-acclaimed King
(indesire wants nothing but to be,
to make room for islands in reality)

“be good, otherwise Haruka will come
to take you away, my child”
(what’s in a name
Haruka is “from far away”)
but children very rarely draw lines
caught in the furious chaotic circles of the world
now that every action has a reaction
reality principle is just a skin
holding the inside out & the outside in.

everyman has his island
of vexed fantasies
look into your eyes from outside in
before you see that fire
or anything else,
see this
-the beautiful war-

the clockwork reversed
time is joking
some plastic smiles
some scattered dreams
and the growing pains
bending us beneath the horizon
here it is
written in my yesterdays
i wouldn't have loved you
differently
next day

with my childlike defenses
holding together
the shape of the world
inside a bubble
a phantasmatic place
or just a drama
(for mama)
here i am anyway

and the world without us
here it is

she opens herself to the horizon
holding desire heavily in her breath
so crushing and withheld
the quiet rush of blood
bleaching his embrace
words withdraw in their matrix
only the form of his lips in her smile
and his walk in her feet
and making love so light
when the truth is androgyne

my town
where wild flowers grow
between tram tracks.
there was a time when
it was hardly morning,
no bridge into daylight.

walls had ears,
neighbors had eyes
whispering behind the curtains
there was an emptiness in the guts
of the city
and poetry locked in the drawers,
Borges was read under the blankets
while Dostoievski was  a comforter:
demons were embedded.

yeah, people were clapping and smiling
watching the nub of history, numb
they had a life to live,
what can you say?

one day the radio
burst on in the streets
some were shivering in the attic
"we are free", they said
"we are free",
came the echo in trance

"shhhhh"! said others,
let us wipe the blood
don't disturb the sacrificed
so we can sleep
without dreams

it's Thursday in my town
streets are weary
and our souls are
slowly expanding

In the depths of the bloodied waters
stones were dissolving -
via an echo the wind was telling me,
the rain brought back to my hearing
rhythms of an ancestor song
with one ear stalking the other
I was beginning already to be divided

monologizing - dialogizing
let us go to sleep maybe the reality
we lost will come to us in a dream

the coldness which came from a misunderstanding
had a touch of nobility
then out of pride came scorn
then hate, then we came
to inhabit the same body
like two convicts in one cell
who are fighting underhand
but suddenly stop when they hear
the warden's step

I am myself scarred on the inside
and have no right to pronounce harmony
between you
but take out the ashes while there is time
give the spirit shape

Ioanid Romanescu, from *Time's Expansion

The ashes of time must fall
somewhere
they fall inside the red
urn of my heart

I must forget I am a poet
this day I am speeding
towards a sure mark

the words I am uttering
are the tears
of the man I was
and died

a devil with
a long tail
is kicking up dust
I can't make out the heavens

Dan Laurentiu, *101 Poems

it is just enough,
too many in depth lessons.
pain always asks for something,
fear has run out of options,
joy wears light dresses
loneliness refuses dinner,
despair sits at a crossroad.

these are just contours of events
obliterating "the vital impetus"
as in a probabilistic game
or in the second law of thermodynamics
blissful equilibrium is just a special retreat
some form of inner spacial homogeneity

this is just a moment
before dinner is served
on a peaceful evening
by a lake
catching the last rays
of the singing sun

Learning the way out.
in between feels like forever
you're darkyears away,
the antimatter
of vicarious personhood.

days crumble upside down
the pain had you butchered
only sparrows forget their stories in the sunset.

the mute carpets keep you company
still life with despair and an apple.
Jesus promised something
-undeciphered-
look at this fallen demigod
you’re a pile of fears
drying in the sun
and the night has no (w)holes to hide
a stuffed puppet
the true form -
unrecognized.

pain is almost a character
roaming inside
tramping blindly the remains of the day
making everything so sharp alive,
look
each cell  has a voice
and you can’t open your eyes:
no space, no name
just a rotten apple
left over from yesterday.
no one came on the mute carpets
and the silence holds on
like a ghost of the future

language gets killed
yet the heartbeats
march  on

I don't believe that you will die
I believe that you will turn
into a night bird
an Athenian owl

a night bird
that chirps in my ear
who are you
where do you come from
where are you going

Dan Laurentiu, *Mountolive

elemental force
her hips sway in Paris
his dreaming hands in Montana
entangled
geography subsides

To live well and to die well is the same task.
Epicurus

the song of the old rusty swing
like a frozen pane
(somewhere in a passing memory)
not knowing if there can be
such thing as genuine trust,
you wait for transparent nights
amid angst,
the turmoil of words, rushing gestures,
tired patterns
suffocating all
clairvoyance
you wake up from the lethargy of dreams
to the cruelty of life devoid
of connection
a door got jammed

your parents and their distant lives
-their past is your future-
carrying their never ending childhood
like a message in a bottle
the contraction of days bears you the same
the taste of death is just a habit now
no safeguard
you whisper your dreams to the ragged baby doll -
“Bebe” is here for you
You’re the pain taster
forcing dangerous juxtapositions
or the silent screaming melodies
abundant in misattunement
while mother flashes her cracked smile
on empty days
it might have been better to swallow
her thoughts
while father has a croaked ambition
never to rest
translating his will of power

the promise of tomorrow
left you unscathed
slipping out of time
needs practice,
a neat forehead,
to bear in mind that
light holds on to uncertainty
every time you fall

last mile home is the hardest

There were tears of joy
There was a misunderstanding
implicitly (who was being born there?)
oh no, a simplicity...
There I was at the fount of milk
A strange woman with arms full
and red  screaming thighs
No need of words
just the heaviness of the breast

First smile, first migration of the soul
in the tearful land
of a new happiness
My baby’s laughter
unriddles the future
of my tender hands

“What is time, mama?”
“Just a circling seed, my child”
“Oh, mama, time is a wheel!”
“What is hope, mama?”
“Hope is a fly catcher, my child,
  a migrant bird.”

Such is happiness
undiluted
the mercy and gratitude of time
in my hardwood
love

We are passing through a blue
period after
a grey period: 'Surely
a green age will follow.' You
stifle your remorse. We are on
our way to
yet
another chance
for tears
in our mother's eyes. Don't you agree? Mothers
enfolded
in the depths -the depths
of land dear
to our souls - where the gods
live
steeped in their
energy. That energy
is proof enough that never, not for
one single
moment, have their hearts
departed
from that magnetic place.
               Magnetic? Of course...
Alone in those lands,
they hang on to their sadness, their wisdom,
while their children
              reach out to catch
                         the golden ring of freedom,
and the risk:

the risk of wandering on an endless,
senseless pilgrimage. Flying
like model planes? Oh,
the thrill
until -
three thousand, twelve thousand
years - they're found, fossilised in sedimentary rocks,
mothers
separated from their children, layers
and layers apart, preserved,
with a bit of luck, in mint condition
(maybe) buried
with all the things that might
be needed in the afterlife...
A movement
from East to West, following
the progress
of the sun. What

was I saying? Oh yes, we are passing through
a blue period, after
a grey period...

Liviu Ioan Stoiciu, from Born in Romania, Contemporary Literature Press, Bucharest 2014

I'm in the here&now;
or on a ***** street busy with indifference
daylight falls over
like an iron curtain
and my caged dreams
suddenly claim
their seed innocence

I thought I met you
on unpredictable roads under my skin,
in the splitting of one second into another,
in the empty spaces of the atoms,
in the breath of the night
into the unthought known
or some promise, untaught

I’m holding here
my exhausted smile
me and a flower lady
holding  unwittingly
a water lily
redeemed

lost in a sky
of strange and far places
a hint of a house
and treetops in the mist
guide my way to you

she gazes
into the same skies
as you do
may your thoughts also
come to be one of accord

if you answered
the tapping of every
water bird
even a wandering
moon could enter

if the haze had not
come out to go in between
the moon and flowers
otherwise even the birds nests
might have burst into blossom

boat upon high seas
if you are drifting without
a harbor or course
give me a call and I'll row
out to teach you about ports

not even knowing
the meaning which the color
of lavender has
but watching it carefully
this one's heart is deeply touched

Murasaki Shikibu, *A String of Flowers, Untied...

Egotist, the master of the ego mist
or some ego antagonist
he is so much there
in the center of a web
of regurgitated fears
recycling pointless
the old cycles of
night after day
life after chaos
but no death
after ego inflation
just a rusty song
of imprisoned moments
or undeciphered gnashing
all character is just the dust
you cannot grasp
grey ruminations
curses wiggling
in times devoid of innocence
the cruelty of a ****
refusing to wither

at the end of his cigarettes
a speck of self
is threading a stratagem
to severe the ties
for the ******* of distance
so that he can continue
uninterrupted
to mutilate his heart

no one can persuade the night
into whitening
like you clean your teeth
of curses
the rest is sadness
the dew would know it.

Something black somewhere      in the vistas of his heart.

Tulips from Tates teazed Henry in the mood
to be a tulip and desire no more
but water, but light, but air.
Yet his nerves rattled blackly, unsubdued,
&suffocation; called, dream-whiskey'd pour
sirening. Rosy there

too fly my Phil&Ellen; roses, pal.
Flesh-coloured men&women; come&punt;
under my windows. I rave
or grunt against it, from a flowerless land.
For timeless hours wind most, or not at all. I wind
my clock before I shave.

Soon it will fall dark. Soon you'll see stars
you fevered after, child, man, & did nothing -
compass love to the pencil-torch!
As still as his cadaver, Henry mars
this surface of an earth or other, feet south
eyes bleared west, waking to march.

from  *The Dream Songs

Old courtyards with tubs of laundry:
‘Go to the washerwoman and do your own washing’
I whisper to you, and the wild apricot trees
all turn suddenly white, the sky pales,
the world is ****** in a drenching buzz.
There΄s a smell of bluebags and a sulphurous bubbling.
You΄d hardly believe it — so much steam rises
that only dirt is left in the copper.
The wild apricots petrify into coral.
It΄s so easy — easy in a woman΄s way —
to wash your soul, to rejoice in the spring wind
shaking the scales on its dragon-tail
so that you΄re looking at soap-bubbles
it blows for you between your fingers.
Two children pass by, holding on a string
a balloon transparent as a bubble.
For a moment we are crouched inside it.

Grete Tartler

[Translated into English by Fleur Adcock]

New Europe Writers Bucharest Tales, Contemporary Literature Press, Bucharest, 2014

Increasingly there’s more in my life
A life between barcode
SIM
Remote with apocalyptic news and dire pornographers

life among multiple camera teams
between several videos about a future that all sounds good

blocks of life between advertising and surveys on how
Europeans can achieve
the cosmic ****** and a more profitable single currency

living ever more my own life
inside an inland country
where in waiting and loneliness I see greetings
from where I hope to reach the Himalayas and write:
‘Life is no good with Coca-Cola!’

Dan Mircea Cipariu

[Translated by Jon a’Beckett]

New Europe Writers  Bucharest Tales, Contemporary Literature Press, Bucharest 2014

Oh, Woman
He’s dreaming of your depth
like a synergy of effortless truths
your imaginary ***, a mystical shore
waxing and waning in violent tides
of affectionate sap
He would fly his kite running out of breath
like a child blessed with forgetting
puer aeternus
He would spin the hours in laughter,
in untamed visions
and here it is...
time revisited with gossamer touch
the bestiary revised with tender beings
making love  in the naked air
in the breeze of forgotten forests
in purple shy sheets
in the miracle of tomorrow
in unshed skins
imagine the bliss of the first breath
the dreams in geological strata

She’s just waiting for your rhyme
for you in primordial waters
unborn
now and again

I am myself
in his encircled silence
lust doesn’t last
only love can travel
with the speed of light

only love can unravel
the colors of time
expose
the silent paradox
of gravity:
to be falling
when you’re flying

falling
deeper
into yourself
while you
elevate
in another

She sits there
expert in silence
She listens
to my oceans
She unknots
daily tribulations
practice the art of patience
in undisguised grace
worded and unworded

She's the forgiver of darkness
simple in compassion
hearted in experience of
giving, waiting, wondering,
musing and learning
side by side

And I just love
her trainers
by the willow trees
the blue T-shirts
the yellow smile
matching the light
in her eyes

I love her like a mother
like a brother
like another human being
I just love
who she is.

You cannot be sad, you cannot be bad, you cannot go far, you cannot subdue the pain

Can I like pink? The color of the flowers, of the irrational happiness of a child, can I like pink?

You can like blue, the color of the bruises from when your unremitting mind hits your body, you can like blue.

Let the little boy run, said the stranger. Let him go and don't fear the danger, the unseen, the unpredictable.
The mother fears, she fears herself without the child. She keeps lying to herself that when the moment will come she will feel free to do it, God will let her now when the moment is right.

The days are from yesterday not long enough to keep this unsettled mind straight. The minutes cannot embrace the impatience and still touch hands. The minutes are now so far apart that they cannot find themselves in hours. The day breaks.

I am playing with the minutes, with the hours, the little boy laughs.
- We have no time, carry on, we have no time, the mother said

The time, teared apart like the petals of a flower ripped by an insecure girl in her boyfriend's love, the time comes together again. The boy has stolen some minutes, so he can play with them later. Hold on to them and laugh whenever you remember your secret, said the stranger.

The day is shorter. Now. But some of us have the time to laugh.

I will hold on to my minutes and when nobody can see me I will wear pink.

*the author wants to remain anonymous

beauty! what a soothing tension
inside the nebula
crammed with vibrant darkness.
signified incessant, lurid
imaginary signifier chasing,
irrational  lightning,
unnamed gods dwelling.

there is suffering imprisoned
in the color of your flesh,
there's false emptiness
inside hurricane’s obsessions
such  frightened taste
in your lipstick

Yes, that is precisely where
beauty holds on to itself,
you just have to feel
its traces
in your tears,
in your fears
of being
so alive

Then we met more often.
I stood at one side of the hour,
you at the other,
like two handles of an amphora.
Only the words flew between us,
back and forth.
You could almost see their swirling,
and suddenly,
I would lower a knee,
and touch my elbow to the ground
to look at the grass, bent
by the falling of some word,
as though by the paw of a lion in flight.
The words spun between us,
back and forth,
and the more I loved you, the more
they continued, this whirl almost seen,
the structure of matter, the beginnings of things.

Nichita Stanescu

ask your blood
your limbs, your breathing feet
what Poetry is -
a phylogenetic anomaly
in light’s discontinuity

or just…
the strange yearning of hematopoiesis

ask the silence in your lungs
the bursting DNA, reinterpreted
how it allures memory inside your bones
how it treads conventions of sleep
with the weight of a sigh

if you ask me
what Poetry is
I’d say: breath calligraphy
a winged dream of depth
on enchanted retina
the bitter-sweet art of airy harmony

ask your hands
what Poetry is
perhaps they’ll take a moment
to bloom

there’s still some music hidden
in the burst of noon
I can feel it in my lips
the Man you are
you ****** time
when you forget to blink

make me your Woman
embodied certainty
doorstep within
pillow for dreams
uninterrupted

I’ll be your road back
into childhood laughter
fill me with poetry, commonplace,
raw matter-of-fact
I’ll wear the day for you
fix little surprise
in the cup of tea
let you play true love
with my heels, dormant

twist the mirror inwards:
I’m yours.
you stranger,
behold thy Woman

It happens
more and more rarely
in my ankle
run, run, run
catch the streetcar
named desire
(I cry with you Tennessee)

decanting the hours,
a rush  into nowhere
in honeycombed memory
the dregs of days
set my teeth on edge,
deepen the archway
of naked irises
hurled into midnight

It happens
lighter and lighter
in my left shoulder
pierced with sunset
lost in a sparrow

imagine infinity, tenderness, a suave delta
the touch of amber whispers
archaic thrill
higher&higher; into devotion
light decompressed in desire
the discipline of time in terror

I stumble in this yielding silence
you're an ****** field
held captive in the fabric of my skin
darkness spins around my thighs
I kneel
I ignite in a prayer to a self-dissolving god
inside the temple of your ribs

dance my raving one,
dance
this is an offering
a mayday in trance
the night has reached from afar
its solar desire

I love you
when the day exhausts its grace
when you wear my pious silence
in you nails

I refuse the touch of morning
just to breath your sleep in

you’re my axis mundi on a Wednesday
yeah,  it’s so natural and crazy
I shudder with this feeling
I search for my roots, I find you dreaming

I love you  
when you stir the ***** blues-smitten
the jazz, the blood
I’m your prophecy, you’re my bane
my lips won’t refuse the spell:
love you whenever.
I have died
again.

-after **

Everything great on earth
begins as something small.
Lao Tzu

I

Older than China
I am the memory of trees;
sip the earth from me.

I remember mist,
sunlight climbing the steep hills
leaf by silent leaf.

When I was a seed
I was drawn to a raindrop:
we made a strange brew.

Take me in silence;
I am all of the autumn,
cup me in your hands.

Warm in your fingers;
I am moments of quiet in
long conversations.

More than a prayer
on the road with the pilgrims,
by windows in rain.

II

And if you see yourself here,
hand lifting the cup,
imagine these are your leaves:

no curse this winter, then spring,
three months of sadness,
you'll see its shadows haunting.

The house will feel empty, but
then there is passion,
cups left on the floor. Sunlight.


Tony Curtis, Three Songs of Home, The Dedalus Press, Dublin, 1998

*the poem was posted with author's permission

sitting in my living room
white socks against red carpet
my sleeping toes testing
the cornerstone of morning
dawn’s hoot woke me to daydreaming
and voila

I’m sitting here
awaiting for a fresh poetic tide
to tease me from the home box:
would you like some poetry for breakfast?
how about lunch?
meet me at dinner
let’s have a poetic feast

before time roller coasters
start screeching the duties of the day
musing on new wonders
in the avalanche of gestures
or before pushing the night to its limit
I enter the maze of your words,
you strangers with poetic souls&bodies;&mind;;
longing to vibrate as one
starving never to conclude
floating restless, incomplete
in love’s amniotic dream

I go out on the door
in the colors of your thoughts
fierce chain reaction
giving is receiving
and all of a sudden, unexpected
my heart would open up to itself in a smile
through distance and time
some unknown kindred soul
has been smiling back at me

I wonder how this can be

it must be Poetry
let it labor upon me

After it blossomed,
The flower said,
"Now, my beauty is beyond my control.
Now, even I am beyond my reach."



Ahmad Nadeem Qasimi, Selected Poems, The Pakistan Academy of Letters, Islamabad 1995

In the silent mornings or in the silent nights
there is a hunch there is a thigh there is a panther
I try to catch your shoulders using a violin
as a butterfly net
but if your hair chimes it's because it's dreaming
if your eyelid blossoms it's because of the wind
if your hand howls it's because it's night
if your ears sleep it's because they're famished
if your shoes laugh it's because they're thinking
and if your shoulders take flight it's because it's very late

If your hand falls silent it's because it's a seashell
if your veins race it's because of the mandrake
if the thigh listens it's because there are still leaves
if the blood foams it's the fault of the umbrellas

If your frock screams it's because it's dying
if your shadow flickers it's because it's burning
if your fingernail sits on the curtains it's because they're violet
if your foot whinnies it's because of the clouds
if the lungs fall asleep it's because it's dark
and if your shoulders choke
it is assuredly because of the trees.

Gellu Naum, Vasco da Gama and other pohems, Humanitas Publishing House, Bucharest, 2007

rip me from my bones
as a sensuous dress in the haste of dawn
such  is the seduction
of your fingertips

in your gaze my breast
is ripening

undress me of the silence
enclosing  freedom
yours is the night
make me collapse
into daylight