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

the nakedness of words as natural
as the simplicity of grass
I am yours only in front of that roundness
when you see through the blues of fire
I am yours in the silence of moss
when darkness is home
when I claim the body of the rain
and your touch becomes lunatic

A time comes when you no longer can say: my God.
A time of total cleaning up.

A time when you no longer can say: my love.
Because love proved useless.
And the eyes don't cry.
And the hands do only rough work.
And the heart is dry.

Women knock at your door in vain, you won't open.
You remain alone, the light turned off,
and your enormous eyes shine in the dark.
It is obvious you no longer know how to suffer.
And you want nothing from your friends.

Who cares if old age comes, what is old age?
Your shoulders are holding up the world
and it's lighter than a child's hand.
Wars, famine, family fights inside buildings
prove only that life goes on
and not everybody has freed himself yet.
Some (the delicate ones) judging the spectacle cruel
will prefer to die.
A time comes when death doesn't help.
A time comes when life is an order.
Just life, without any escapes.

**Carlos Drummond de Andrade

you are a stranger, I keep forgetting

forgetting that with you
I do not speak my mother tongue

what do they call it
when we reach toward one another
across the contorted mirror of our senses
and your glance teaches me
that this is the way

what we say seems to relapse into roots
down
down to the seabed that became
a land of many flocks and pastures

and now
here you are
Stranger

caged wings beat in my body
which remembers these things

remembers its winged lightness
of the beginning

when it was promise

when it was
word

Ioana Ieronim, from *Ariadne's Veil

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

she is wearing some chemistry
an old dress for a bluestocking
she turns her face towards a green sea
new rhymes for blazing verbs lurk
in the definition of imprecision but
everything is falling into place
cell to cell conversations afloat
shards of mystery smooth
rounding out the caves of night
mirror wars meanders
mitochondrial Eve confused
into this new creature
saturated with radiance

questions not asked
but answeared
how you love her
do your hands chase
her tango shoulders
is there music inside
the shade of water
waste inside nails
naivete in knees imprisoned
vibration self-asserting

a devious sweeping world
of unthinkable gestures
your hands a seismograph  
for the cataclism of shiver
no need to search for
her selfless sense
as you ravening negotiate
the fossilized song of you
the depth of this tympanum
this membrane
time itself this creature
zoon erotikon
levellling up resurecting
ravaging enchanting

all the rites of passage
for the overwhelm of flavor
she breathes in prehistoric gills
nirvana dance inside DNA
you redefine your sharpness,
delicacy tears & tearing
she dissapears in a snare drum
sanity evaporates as mist
over arched forests
in the pulse of no air
in between skin and akin
in the bewilderment of bodies
searching for their lyric
manna for beautiful beasts
over the sargasso sea

she wails genuine
metanoia, love's dianoia
no disambiguation