you really believe we are not more than we are
at the table or in our waking-up gestures or while we throng
in the morning in front of the newspaper stands or in the long autumn evenings
when we come back home with the same and the same movements
down the same and the same streets?

those from tomorrow will stop asking this question.
but us, now and here, isolated by the language which will put an end to it,
it's in vain that we dug with our fingernails into the mortar, in vain that we've stood
glued to the walls: from over there not a thing could be heard -
in the blind alley of our speech the answer can't be worked out yet.

and only seldom have we opened our eyes and then merely to see
how there are poured over us as if over coffins
tons of unknown. and right then we closed them back up
quickly and we said it's not true, we are still alive, i still am alive, he lives
he lives - i touched the one who was lying next to me
he is alive - he turned over in his sleep he laughed he sighed.

you really believe we haven't been heard in any other room
which we didn't have time to enter?
either the room was not yet walled up or nobody lived in there yet
or those who will come to live in it will show up too late or
were there but didn't hear us when we knocked on the walls or others
knocked on the walls too then and they alone were heard
or we didn't notice when we stepped from one room into another
from one basement into another or we didn't want to break down the walls
of the last room out of fear not to, or we couldn't imagine that beyond
that basement there could be other rooms, lit other than by
this lye pouring through the cracks of the back door
or the front doors were not yet walled in and no other
room was yet walled in over there -

then we rushed voraciously back upon own body,
we went downstairs and pulled furiously the trap doors above us -
in a fury as if in a province of self-forgetfulness
as in the womb of a woman from which we shouldn't have ever
come out.

Ioan Es. Pop, excerpt from " you really believe we are not more than we are here", **The Livid Worlds