We shall echo the points that scrape the skies
Above the streams of Wonder City.
On the streets below, men shall shift through time,
Watched on by soaring concrete;
And in the steaming sewers strewn beneath
These streets— O Wonder City!—
Rats shall run the labyrinth of the sewers
To find the traces of a world
Before the life of Wonder City.

Poetry is the weeping eye
it is the weeping shoulder
the weeping eye of the shoulder
it is the weeping hand
the weeping eye of the hand
it is the weeping soul
the weeping eye of the heel.
Oh, you friends,
poetry is not a tear
it is the weeping itself
the weeping of an uninvented eye
the tear of the eye
of the one who must be beautiful
of the one who must be happy.

by Nichita Stanescu, translated by Thomas Carlson and Vasile Poenaru

Distance is the cog wheel
on the haunted axle of my hearing,
grinding fine the deadened mind
of that unborn god
waiting to be caught
by the earth's blue speed,
and carrying in a handled urn
the plucked heart - ours,
it's beating, it's heard, it's beating, it's heard,
a sphere in wild growth -
the roads are wet with tears,
memory frail and elastic,
a sling for stones, a gondola
drowned in childlike Venice's,
a tooth yanked from the cells with a string -
down the empty socket of Vesuvius. And you exist.

by Nichita Stanescu, translated by Thomas Carlson and Vasile Poenaru

Who knows

Not the best of us
Nor the stargazers
Not the book readers
Nor the book writers

Especially not the politicians
Who never stop
To ask the question
Or to ask any questions

Their nature is to accumulate
Pretend to lead
Pretend to guide
Still, their nature is taking

Some pretend to tilt
toward compassion
Toward caring
Toward altruism

Me, a grizzled octogenarian
Asks no questions
Merely wonders

Where has all of the wonder gone
Is altruism real
And if it is, why is
It ******* by greed

I look again upon the sky as I have done so many times before.
To see the change of natures' palette as sun sinks beyond horizon's floor.

The blue of daytime sky and the wisps of white and mottled gray,
give-way to golden inlaid mauve upon red curtain as amber fades away.

Hues of golden yellow that were present short moments before,
now lost beyond the silhouetted landscape as if cast to distant shore.

Flame upon the heavens, cloud lit as if scattered, precious jewels.
Colours of natures palette so vibrant, disobeying all artistic rules.

silhouettes of birds in flight etched in black upon the fading light,
All traversing in rapid beat of wing, to seek shelter from the night.

Trees and distant vistas mere shadows where sun did slide away,
as palette welcomes the new nighttime bidding farewell to passing day.

is it dangerous to wish
for those goods of which
are not I, are not me,
are not the breath that we breathe
upon the gentlest and free summer morning?
or the gleam of the beaks
perched humbly in the cradle
of the cuckoo's nest still adorning?
before their wings bare vulnerable
to the light of the wind and to
man and to bringing
their unsuspecting redeeming
to the order of clinging to the now;
or the we, or the me, and
the I, and the us, and
the beat
of the heart that keeps borning?

My wondrous, I love

to meet her, she embraces --


every thought I have.

My wondrous may be

contradictory, she is --


always loving me.

Maybe some years gone by
raising the pyramid golden high.
The inbuilt deep sea of science and arts
in the making run in timeless time.
So why ponder spilling the beans
in one fine moment down the open sky?