unseen the trees capture the clouds
moss captures the fog of oceans
roots store the sky deep into the earth
even dreams have their cycle
words capture unseen chemicals
is it in my eyes or in your eyes
the rain that grows discourses
of fire?

The mourning is
about it never being
the way I needed
it to be.

My life itself a
disturbance of mourning

Stands in my life. Before me. The
dead girl under the bed
her skin transparent as mine

disappears. I come out
and there is no mother. Sometimes
she appears and there is no telling what
attracts her warmth. Approaches and departs.
Becomes desire,
the loot of her mourning.

Empty womb pillow. I am not
enrapt. Its’ tufts flap my fringe.
Behind me, at my sides
stands mourning.

I have only to be busy with your burial.
Sharpening flint to a pillar
pile to a mound
and turn from it.

It is gone
forever.
And I am.

By Noa Vardi, M. D.

I sought to be loved,
But no one was there.
Day after day my heart ached;
I longed to share my passion.

One starless winter night,
My heart gave up.
It went empty and cold;
Life had no meaning.

Hatred washed over me,
Like a wave
Over a sunlit rock pool.
My thirst for love had gone.

My desire had evaporated.
I know my yearning will never be satisfied;
I will continue with my life,
A slave to hatred.

Francis (aged 12 years)
from *New Families, Old Scripts

for a moment, so stubborn as a breath
so fragile as the tremble of a leaf
so sudden as the harmony of tears
I feel this space in which je suis toi
feelings and words are one with
the gratitude principle for
not to harm the riverbeds of time
I wrap myself in poems, between the earth and the sky
I need to pay my respects to the wisdom of the air
where there is nothing more to say,
in that space of miracle
time is passing through me like the sadness
of a beautiful woman

night is falling with high speed on my shoulders
it has a strange elasticity
I ask your skin to give me some memories,
a superconductivity for sonic pulses & tactile waves,
quantic waves are collapsing into a strange synchronicity
the air might survive untrapped but not in my cells
a torid torrent makes your moves catch gravity
I can't be prosaic cause desire might ****
all the singing birds of the blue nights
that were rarely seen losing their tension
between silence and pain this emotional upheaval
that pushes the skin to the frontiers of asphyxiation
we are in Plato's cave right now burning down
the shadows with the magnitude of
you and I inside we are or just this
reciprocal dislocation
there is no I, no you, nothing less than
an infinite field of mutual recognition
a blazing simplicity unspoken

when guns speak louder than words
all beauty must die
when we let any child die
all hope must die

when the earth will move us
far away from tears
all beauty should remember
its momentary flee
in a child's knee

I carry this huge body inside me
of beings unknown
to themselves
they look at the walls
and don't tear them down
they murmur a refrain
indecipherable,
the self-hypnosis of life.

we live the best we can
in these lands
we seek each other out
and not find each other
only sometimes,
to our surprise.
we live in this body
of tears and fear.

I was little, very small,
it must be said.
I envied the flight of birds,
I crushed the flowers
with such a tenderness,
unbearable.
I had a feeling that poetry alone
had not pulled the bridge
from the shore of trust

we know the thrill, the trembling, the rush
the falling into falling into falling
only words survive of me as I surface
no escape for the velocity of resonance
a singularity  undescribable
beyond the bones an unfinished poem

you remember the confessions you made to my skin
how I used to touch you as if you were a land of the impossible
still possessed by a dreamy beast, my blood
as if the days hadn't invented the time of dying
love starts with a sigh, with a passing by
waiting for something to happen to the wind

"That's something poetry can do for you, it can entrance you for a moment above the pool of your own consciousness and your own possibilities."*
Seamus Heaney

it is not enough
the eyes, the ears,
the ebb and flow
of calcium in bones
of iron in stars
sometimes silence pours down
like a blessing
some left their offices
and they're now deciphering
the eyes of thunder
some inner power turns me around:
the tribes of air
the shapes of a child's wonder
the involuntary rehearsal of words
this passivity of language
like jazz phrases
the wrinkles of that woman
imprinted in my heart
(by her murderous fingers)
spring gives me rose-like mornings
(because of my bedroom curtains)

and there is something else
this feeling of oneness
the cedar and the flowering river
motherly care, exhaustion, or not knowing
and the hues of morning skies
countless fleeting little gestures
and the cries of birds
tearing solitudes
my complete abandonment to him
in the sea of time

I let the window open
every day is a declaration of love
even when I hate
the dance with the unknown
the inextricable
the polyphony of laughter
and darkness

you live in me during the day
and I **** your name each night
anew

My grandmother was married by the communist party. Yes, don’t be surprised. Comrade Soare insisted: comrade Alexandru is a promising man, he knows the right direction for the world to go. Grandma wasn’t convinced, but the party insisted, it was her duty.  They lived in a city where every street had a dark end. Women were not allowed to have silence between their legs. Only arms filled with zest. My father married my mother for the garden. For the apple trees, peach trees, cherry trees, for daffodils, roses, for the raspberry. Their minds colonized,  the right to think abolished. The right to feel obscured. Politics of desire mystified. The wind had ears. But they were proud, they were tall, they looked the other way. They carried history in their teeth without laughter. I came along as an unfinished story. The debris of time filled my mother’s womb. It was never mine. They gave me the demand of truth: touch feels good. A living soul is necessary. Thinking is vital. Community is air.  We need each other.
One day I knew, how it happens. My blood started flowing with cataclysmic power.  This is not the time for Hollywood love stories,  but honest touching. You spin my mind, and I keep dancing.  I carry your body in my silences just for the sake of the world.  I had to cry. Passion is terrifying. You suddenly don’t recognize the meaning of crossroads. The world gets swept away.  I feel like shouting at the speed of the world decomposing. You make me laugh.  What if love is a tyrant?  There is emptiness hidden in the seed of desire. I had to learn from tears, from disembodied words.  I have to learn again the meaning of freedom. Who knows what is this everything that matters?

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

finally some light can settle
in the hidden places
between one moment
to another
the wholes of time are filled
with dirt
with blue horror
like on the bottom of the sea

as inside, so outside
as above, so below
they used to say
but light there is a medium
of refraction for darkness
in this desolate place
of destruction
for one to exist
to be real
to feel safe
to have it all
another should be
trashed, diminished,
disfigured, humiliated
not in innocent metaphors
not in unkind dreams
not in works of art
but out there inside or
on the streets busy
with people

such is the gentleness of light
and the merciful god of unity
in the design of heart
when we can still recognize
the human kind

I am still standing here
and quietness can come
cause I've already cried
an ocean of light

the face of man is still burning
in the name of God missing an "o"
while some  "map of  the problematique"
is lying naked in the sun

still,
don't stop the rock & roll
the blissful oblivion
this vital movement
into forgiveness

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.

snow has the height of pigeons today
translucent joy trapped in its consistency
the whole world is moving I am standing still
to listen to the intensity of ice, to its labour
to hold the tension of true opposites
the perpetual dance of white turning into black
maybe the trees are hallucinating their dreams
the same way we do
sometimes I forget the lesson of winter
to find itself again it has no choice but to
become spring

it's got to be the right time
the right one for the
trance of dance
of crying
of love
or prayer
stay awhile to feel
the breath of hours
or the pilgrims breathing
near darkening forests
zebras forgetting their
blackness
the pulse of far riders
blown away
by a mirage caravan

blessed those who
pray for the calmness
of rain

no doors, complete surrender,
this vibrational mode
listening to the silence of your skin
I offer myself as a curb of melting points
you give yourself as screaming locks

don’t stop tearing me with gentleness
I’ll found myself again
into the liquid mercy in the beginning
the solid idea of us

"I am you only when I am myself"*
Paul  Celan

night comes like a wave
with eyes full of stones
and your pain is left outside
no earth in your heart
the air blocks the flight when

then
all you want: this old fight
to push everything against the clarity of darkness
push yourself against everything
keep up with the buds of pain
emerging and disappearing
like an unkept promise

somehow
it seems like
the wind in your gaze knows how to
empty a room full of people
but not how to learn new ways of learning
since the mind is a deaf alley
some truths transit the night
to shed their hearts
like stones in a pond
of unknown tears

and
the night comes again like a wave
with blue screams
this stereo pain
this graffiti of anxiety or lack of syntax
and you cannot fill the gap
between self and self
limb and limb
with the (t)error
of having to
die

still
there's much road ahead
and we'll keep loving you
please let the night
carry you
to this strange silence-heart
to some whirlful gravitational words
your own -

i told you to stay away from mornings,
their raw sun is not for us.
whereas the blurred and heavy sun of our world
hardly steams up the horizon. we are
at the beginning of another world and of others suns.

you've remained alone. it's good. you have the whole past at hand.
you've seen evil with eyes wide open and you will heal.
one day you'll understand that everything that shines
brings death closer to you.

evenings, on the other hand, will please you here:
you are in the age of livid worlds,
half shadow, half unknown.
be welcome. here the future
has almost passed.

Ioan Es. Pop, **The Livid Worlds

the heart is partly eye
the eye is partly heart
the clay You made us with is well kindled
since we set fire to fire
and we stay in the oven of the three youths
we are kindled from the same flame
love gives a fingerprint to the heart
above the stretched body of death, we shall be ploughmen.

*Ioan Silviu Batariuc

if I close my eyes and fall like forever
deeper and deeper, just deep enough
I can feel the speed of the earth
it spins me further away from the path of harm
if you want to know me just look at the clouds
they carry the rythm of my tears
far away into the roundness of a blue heart

words stumble between teeth
this house has pitfalls instead of windows
silence is a stethoscope full of tears
in this girdle, the cage of pain
when the day’s edges play hide and seek
with my drained smile
I wait like a statue of salt
for this faraway yearning
to grow
curseless eyes

it is still tomorrow
make more room for the  past
into the future
the rhythm of our time is in
the narrative perhaps

I was too often said to be
crazy like one grandma
not odd enough I’ve always felt
like being born out of  my papa -
two knives in the same sheath
cause papa Zeus was devouring his child

so one day came when
I was drowning  in my blood
-confessing can be hard and bitter-
crooked with incessant need to love
I let each morning scream
acts of imagination and lonesome tears were
craving for some tender understanding
terror instead of midnight dreams
I was a beggar  burdened with awe

(all I ever wanted was You – mother,
you-father,
you-brother,
you-lover,
you-friend&foe;
you-the Other)

now if you think words are just words
you’re sooooo mistaken
living creatures they are
breeding selfhood
torching the shadows cast by feelings
in intensity

thus I took refuge in the future
-the deserted island of our best illusions-
enclosed myself in a dream
against the movements of pain
dismantling, maddening

it's only now that I can speak about myself
in the third person
"wo Es war, soll Ich werden"
so let the light explode in the windshield
it doesn’t matter where I’m heading
as long as I’m a lullaby
and You’re singing with me

I don't know what love is
I just know how to take people inside
with their delicate shivers waiting to be seen
I let them use me like a stranger,
like a pillar, like a craw scare,
like a gentle touch , like forgotten certainty
I undress their dying souls in my silence
I remain in the hurt
I struggle  to spare the blinded of my words
only because there is a girl
I cannot let go
with her wonder eyes
carrying the river of blood
or dreaming of the brightness
of the others might

I don't know what love is
I only know the shape of my heart
with every man
with every woman
I recognize inside

my body is a tropical forest in transition
thought is a beast with binocular hearing
as I am waiting for him naked
in front of a narrow window to infinity

"I'm not able to rid myself of my self."  Herve Guibert

days alienated from nights,
from the magnitude of their roots
in the absence of your touch
electric love poems on the tip of your tongue
an electric symetry seems to surface in me today
in the doorway

I surrender to the nascent desire and glance into
the protocol of impulse, the chemistry of freedom inhaled
energetic transference from your skin onto mine
a cave woman deeper than me insists to dress me
in your unknown selves since
I have nothing else to undress, like a wound

Nothing of what she had told me
proved to be true
not even wardrobes with thousands of dresses
not even a ballroom
neither garden with peacocks and harts
nor castle
which I've been looking for for three days
but have not found, her palace with view of the sea
of which I found nothing but the view of the sea
that, nonetheless, filled me with tenderness:
so she didn't lie to me after all
she is a good woman, she loves me

Matei Visniec
translated by Anca Romete

“Your silence has been with me and I have let it have its say. I feel, as always, the same closeness to you which your silence makes into a kind of speech of its own.”
Anne Sexton

"and if I remember
you are my memory
and if I forget
you do not fade away"
E. E. Cummings

"Your body is away from me
but there is a window open
from my heart to yours.
From this window, like the moon
I keep sending news secretly."
Rumi

"I am learning to see. I don’t know why it is, but everything enters me more deeply and doesn’t stop where it once used to."
Rainer Maria Rilke

“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

"Welcome to this place"

"In our secret world, we were colliding
All the places we were hiding love"*

a beautiful warrior spirit rests in her
the clarity of numbers
the will of mountains
the ignorance of dew

sometimes she feels herself
with uncertain fingers
saying let it slide
to all the tears
not turned into poetry

there is such force in her smile
despite decades of loneliness
despite the heavy burden of an empty sky
she has an electrical heart
dreaming of the acceleration of life
in the first and only home
she knew

her heart is dreaming to be born again in every smile
in every fiery pulsation,
to rest in the dream of the womb
she owned

that time in the sea of womb
doesn't need to be remembered
cause it's in the most intense of breathing in,
the most vulnerable cry,
the most beautiful self-abandonment
when life just trusts life
with the heart power

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

portraits in sepia crowding the table
no mirror path, no sugar
we drink our coffee black
deserted roads are blossoming in our eyes
under the table - disgust
some well disguised hatred
dinner is never served
cause the cubists reinvented the atom
I stay by the window counting widow-days
wondering
how many motherless women
can teach their children what to say
to the never day

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

From the deep anxiety of dawn
the grove of trees unveils.
Sad awakenings.
Leaves, sister leaves,
I hear your lament.
Autumns,
moribund sweetness.
O youth,
the hour of growth is barely past.
High skies of youth
impetuous freedom.
And I am already desert.
Caught on this melancholy arc.
But night scatters distances.
Oceanic silences,
astral nests of illusion,
O night.

when there is no cell
when there is no body
when I am on the edge
you rise
a wave
a sea
an ocean
embracing me
while I plunge

Lidia Vianu, from *My Cup of Light

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

A time will come
when everything will be in its place

happy the man who on his inside
is bringing this about

Ioanid Romanescu, from **Magic

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 falls over me from above
the sea songs in my hair wait for an allusion
my hips are shelter for the dance of blue shades
love is this imprecise semiosis even when
you go into specifics about its wavelengths
the splitting time of atoms,
its intensity, radiation and schedule

my steps leave no trace, my hands have no voice in your deja vu
a semiotic thing your imaginary body
there is no point in living only in one dimension
an unknowable god takes snapshots from our deeper minds while
love is just this superimposed image falling from above, turning into the sea

days revolve in circles and
transparent dilemmas: death and seduction
hours like sirens and full hearts
the conquerer is no winer with his reflexes drawn into eagerness
I saved some slopes into unknown
as they set the table for the unheard screaming
whose is the fierce desire?
what does the poor mind know about
the honest being?
what can your body do with his/hers/theirs?
dangers in the four corners
true love is the hardest thing
those days wouldn't let go of the centre
the full-emptiness of this desire:
give myself to me already devoured
hurt, shame, helplessnes

true love leaves you free
incomplete facing the heart
of darkness
unresolved

"my heart, all of me, this tree
turning its leaves
one by one in the wind

fluttering rustling with the call
of your closed lips

mere light can move it
a touch of light
can make it sing

the shell of our lives capturing
the tatters of a song
: a torn veil, the unraveled loincloth
of a wandering god

these sharp caressing tatters
tongues
of a song"

Ioana Ieromin, from *The Lens of a Flame

silence melts like caramel inside
like an empty-full touch
words travel without meaning
the city indulges its narcosis
all the dumping fights,
jouissance de vivre on the move
and he wants someone
to fill in the blanks:
oh, this is my skin

he carries his cotton touch
on forgotten routes
to vibrant roots
identities combine & depart
some are searching for new pronouns
the silence of silences rejuvenates the city
fresh dreams
new transactions
between truth and reality

and he wants -
fill himself in
and some wonder

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

"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

those days - each a capsule
a miniature of an idea
or an emptied truth
your soft lips postponed
bitter fingers knock
on unheard doors
my blood unfolds myself
with wonder

I can't drag the shadow of
the afternoon light back
into its nest
into the bud of silence -
back to its muse

my dreams have caught
*time fever

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

when i watch you
wrapped up like garbage
sitting, surrounded by the smell
of too old potato peels
or
when i watch you
in your old man’s shoes
with the little toe cut out
sitting, waiting for your mind
like next week’s grocery
i say
when i watch you
you wet brown bag of a woman
who used to be the best looking gal in georgia
used to be called the Georgia Rose
i stand up
through your destruction
i stand up

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

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

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

they were deep like roses. like leaves*
the thought is blowing them away. remember
how much death we are capable of
and how much earth there is in the sky.

bu they are deep like roses in autumn.
the leaf of the hands sighs as it falls
like a bird on the mediterranean -
exhausting the light of the waters.

still, he was saying, there is too much snow.
winter snowed through his mouth.
it too did not let them see each other any more.
it fell on their hands and put them out.

Ioan Es. Pop, from *The Livid Worlds