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irinia Apr 2015
I am ashamed that I am Spanish because of Franco
I am ashamed that I am French because of Algeria
I am ashamed that I am Algerian because of France
I am ashamed that I am American because of Bush, Iraq
and the bloodshed once among brothers
I am ashamed that I am Russian because of Stalin, Gulag
and recently of this and that
I am ashamed that I am German because of ******, clearly
(Pol *** appears more and more seldom in the lists, but one is horrified, humanly ashamed, remembering)
I am ashamed that I am English because of football etc
I am ashamed that I am Polish — only when I am not proud
I am ashamed that I am Turkish, but then there are Kurds...
I am ashamed that I am Czech and allowed myself to be stifled

(I am just as ashamed myself — some say, who feel
shame in its extremity and hide weapons in pantries, waiting for that moment
in which they wash away their shame with the blood of traditional enemies)
I am ashamed that I am Orthodox or Catholic and I wedge and split
the mountain on which Jesus bled — before others made even smaller
pieces out of his Golgotha below
I am ashamed that I am Indian because... well, it’s no matter
I am ashamed that being Macedonian I let the Greeks be even more
I am ashamed that I am Korean and one of Kim Ir Sen’s
I am ashamed that I am Korean no matter where, as long as
Kim Ir Sen’s Koreans remain
I am ashamed that I am Serbian, but... let me think
I am ashamed that I am Chinese because: ‘You’re Chinese?’
I am ashamed that I am Romanian because of Ceausescu, Dracula of course

and now, God, all these Romanians all over the world...
I am ashamed of my nation even when I am not ashamed
— but each of us seeks to forget something
I am ashamed because .......... [Everyone: fill in the blanks, write yours here!]

but you, but you — you, only you
you, whose nation filled the desolate earth with life and kindness
you are the man who begins the new day
today
with your first step

*Ioana Ieronim
irinia Mar 2023
let me listen to you
your hidden landscapes
your lives lost
in velvety oblivion

listen to the streams of blood
throbbing at your wrist
in the tender flesh inside your elbow

listen to the vulnerable intensity
in the soft vale at your collarbone

the silence on your lips
the whirls below

listen
listen through you
to these things that one cannot speak

by Ioana Ieronim from Ariadne's Veil
irinia Feb 2016
Hypnotic days
hypnotic nights
our bodies have burnt
all clothes
and several lives

we are
as hungry as the world
as old
as young

our bodies
two motionless stones
in a mountain river

Ioana Ieronim, from *The Lens of a Flame
a repost from one of my favourite poets, I accidentally deleted it
irinia Oct 2016
forehead to forehead
and closed eyes

so close that we fall in place
like folds of silk
like folds of wool

like our flesh that knows so much
and can so much
forget

Ioana Ieronim from *Ariadne's Veil
irinia Apr 2021
When we are
Overwhelmed by fear
And the God at our core
Has left

We become
The shoes waiting
In the chest
Of a
Paralyzed woman.


by Riri Sylvia Manor,
English by Ioana Ieronim
from Poetry and Science
An Anthology of Comtemporary Authors from Romania
irinia Jan 2016
You say: to be penetrated, to penetrate. Sea-sand, sand-sea
verging on the very centre. Words fall between us

like something broken. Listen, I love you.
But you, having it only your way, exist, exist, exist.

You are not being paid for this and still,
Mr. and Mrs. Other, you stroll along the street as if

you’re only a name and have no navel. I
act like you, repeat the movements

which you repeat. Tell me, reflection —
I throw another stone at you — is anyone more actual than me?

I say sand-sea, sea-sand. Like something
broken: a multiplication of faces, legs and hands                 like
something

that’s there. So: enough. Come back to me. I’ll let you go
as often as you like.

Now there’s no longer a difference between us, except this
poem
where some sort of a world lives. Another possibility,

not really different: here, you don’t leave at all.
You don’t stop coming for a moment. I open

a mirror and turn its pages in front of what’s already
written. It’s what you are: sadness in front of the blue evening sky,

anger, insult, longing ******* the blue from your chest
or happiness that suddenly spills in front of the blue of that evening sky;

it’s a voice which accompanies what, looking,
I see now or don’t see. And I see you:

world by world, now by now, one
and yet another one. In this poem that stumbles from page

to page you watch and flicker between letter and letter
and vanish — present in every one of these apparently silent centimeters —

and don’t stop coming, and not really coming. So enough, please,
don’t hide everywhere, talk to me, all of you at once.

Amir Or, from Let's Speak You
translated by Ioana Ieronim
irinia Mar 2023
but who are you, Theseus, what is your name
behind the name that I call even in my sleep
when there is no memory of the worlds
you have founded
and will

what stays hidden beneath your name that I whisper
with a hunger older than ourselves
with a thirst so fresh in the fleeting moment
that words to name it have yet to be born

who are you to me, Theseus
my lord of many lives
and a hidden essence?

who? the labyrinth of days
shows me a different you
every time I open my eyes

it’s my words that ask, not I

not I who can listen to you with my skin
and can feel you with my hearing,
taste and touch and arrest with a gaze
across expanses bending over the horizon

bridge over the water
cobweb over cliffs
joy
joy over joy

a life-saving answer
maybe
to the riddle
when the time comes

by Ioana Ieronim from Ariadne's Veil
irinia Oct 2016
Poems like bread, you say
rough and sweet
like the bread for those
who plough and harvest

bread like home
bread like far from home
the bread of communion
of survival

bread to feed silence and darkness
feed the beast’s hunger for beauty
and blood

wisps from Ariadne’s ball of red fleece
poems
across the void

their promise
their echoes that keep us walking
in the dark

Ioana Ieronim from *Ariadne's veil
irinia Apr 2016
In my native land where some have bread
but others hold the knife, and a rustless
chain of interest links the one to the other,
in my resplendent and sad country,
I'm an aged raven, wingless,
an inconsequential pariah with a white star of distinction on his
                                                                                                                       forehead,
a bottomless vessel into which all would ***** -
all - their bile and powerlessness, their hatred.
And since in my land
I fear nothing,
and since in my land nothing
can happen to me except my hopeless
love of Mary,
I suddenly feel overwhelmed with unfamiliar joy,
by unbounded happiness in my heart's
thought, by limitless ecstasy
like death in gold and blood. Like radiance of flesh.
So, in my native country of murdered thoughts,
of guilty silence, humble elation within,
I admit responsibility and affix my signature hereunto -
Liviu Antonesei.

Liviu Antonesei, from City of Dreams and Whispers
translated by Adam J. Sorkin and Ioana Ieronim
irinia Oct 2014
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
irinia Dec 2015
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
irinia Nov 2014
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
irinia Nov 2015
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
irinia Jan 2016
read these lines
slowly

let them blow your foliage apart
find your forsaken paths
arrest you
in the whisper of the story before story

cover your feet like freshly mown grass
like the fresh foam of milk
in the dim light
before daybreak

do read
these lines
slowly
locked in their letters and tendrils

as if
an embrace

**Ioana Ieronim
irinia Apr 2016
In my arms - thought - my words
you are malleable wax, a diamond
that reveals itself. Light of the tunnel, you!
The pyramid catches hold of our hands.
We become transparent, we become translucent.
Alone. I come near you ascending from time's
shadow. Free, free from everything and alone.
Above the city - fiery halo -
bodies float void of fear. The future
becomes present, the present, hope.

Liviu Antonesei
translated by Adam J. Sorkin and Ioana Ieronim
irinia Oct 2016
feelings
like lizards

like she-wolves
with their eyes of ember
in the dark

motion arrested
waiting for the mind to reach
its hypnotic body

**Ioana Ieronim
irinia Dec 2015
let me listen to you
your hidden landscapes
your lives lost
in velvety oblivion

listen to the streams of blood
throbbing at your wrist
in the tender flesh inside your elbow

listen to the vulnerable intensity
in the soft vale at your collarbone

the silence on your lips
the whirls below

listen
listen through you
to these things that one cannot speak

**Ioana Ieronim
irinia Nov 2014
***
"no distance
for your words

a breath a voice a presence a force
coming straight
reassured

touching my nakedness
under my clothes"

**Ioana Ieronim
irinia Jan 2016
as elusive
as unstoppable
as the Heraclitean wave
around a jug
with the dark void at its core

Ioana Ieronim, from *The Lens of a Flame

— The End —