Vow

I do not dare talk to you about eternity

When everything that I owe is so ephemeral

Especially the body

                  my mostly caressed body

Dressed up in the most beautiful

                   tight and warm dress

                   of its white skin.

 

But

For as long as I love you

For as long as I hold you

                   on the pedestal of my heart

                                                I will adore you:

                   You will be the sphinx of my lucidity

                   And the black Minotaur

                                                     of my

                                                            violet

                                                                    subconscious.

                    You will be the king of my desires

                                                     always submitted

                                                 to your desires

                    And the god of my ever lasting

                                                     young soul

                                                 or rather a child.

 

And like a god I will lead you

                     beyond time.

 

But only if you wake up –

                     if you wake up some time –

 

 

English version by

Muguraş Maria Petrescu

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Afforestation

Let me imagine that you would suffer from a sudden amnesia

Just like the characters of so many Latin American telenovelas.

That you have already moved to such a country

Living in its capital city

                                situated

 

In an even lifeless

                  haunted by winds and drought-stricken

                                                                           plain.

A city capital

With no parks and no forests around.

 

Don’t remember anything from before

Just let another fate choose you

And live your life

                       by another

                                       unknown woman.

 

Let me miss you.

But out of all these reasons

As well as from other

                       subjective/objective reasons

Why should I write you:

                       “I miss you”?!

And then I’ll draw a tree for you

And then another one

                       with each every letter

And little by little

I’ll afforest the view

In front of your window

Around your house

And even further and further

 

Then I’ll draw mountains

                              and hills

                              and valleys

And I’ll afforest them all:

 

With Christmas fir trees.

With small tiny hedge thorns

                                             invaded by the white flowers’

                                             aphides

                                             and guarded by

                                             thorns.

With beech trees that rustle and long-lived oak trees

With effeminate

                         birch trees.

With very bitter alder trees

                                          and solitary maple trees.

With dreaming linden trees

                                          Like poets.

With silky willows with many a twig

                                                          floating downstream.

With very straight poplars

         candles that climb up to the sky

                      with heart-shaped leaves

                      in fibrillation…

And in the forests there start to swarm

Phreatic streams

And great and free

                        wild beasts

                             multiplying themselves

                                                 magically

As in “One Hundred Years of Solitude”.

On the branches

                         there are no fruit

                                         but birds

Vividly colored;

Let them chirp

And I hope that you’ll understand

What they say to one another.

 

And in the glades

                           in spring

                   shivering softly

There’ll appear:

                   frail little corn flowers

                           watered

                                       with white-bluish snowdrops

                   shining among them

                            like snow in the moon

                   hollowwort hesitating like ephebes

                   newly-born fresh sweet violet flowers

                   and especially spring crocus

                          all dressed up

                                            in dark blue-violet

                   and in autumn

                   in tinted faded restrained violet.

And thus in time

                  I’ll change

The forms of relief of your country

The flora and the fauna

And the climate then

And with them even those people from there

                              Especially you.

Until in the end you will grasp

The meaning and pressure of the word DOR. 

 

And only by then will you begin to come back

And through you our words

Will begin to flow down

                                     more vivid than blood

 

And only by then will you be able to respond:

 

That there are so many contemporaries - billions! –

                               who will never be able to meet

As if they lived in ages and in different worlds

It really seems too much that we too

                                however have met

And beyond everything

                                to be with you

                                to be with me.

 

And if you ever choose to meet your death

Tell it to me and I’ll be there

 

So that

        the two of us

                        die together!

 

 

English version by

Muguraş Maria Petrescu

DOR = longing, yearning, nostalgia, missing. Upon Carolina Ilica’s request we kept in the poem the Romanian version of this word. The word DOR cannot be translated as such, that is why here-above we give variants. It derives from the linguistic root of the word DORINŢĂ = desire expressing a burning feeling of longing for a remote person or for an unattainable thing.

 

 

                

 

 

 

 

Sacrality

A heaven just like in the beginning, vegetal.

Orchards with flowers worked out by bees:

When the first comes, the other one just leaves.

Acknowledged landscapes: valley-hills,

 

On which the dew will hang like in a cloud.

In honeycomb like in hexagonal goblet

From wax honey increases, doesn’t melt

As it will do to me, when I do miss my folks.

 

Herodutus writes me from ancient times,

That Southern border trespassed by nobody

Was fully guarded then, only by bee;

 

Living the same now, matriarchally,

 

And in the valley-hill, undulatory sky

Transposed by our music hearing

Into this DOINA displaying its full sounding

 

In a museum – a native space sacrality.

 

English version by

Muguraş Maria Petrescu

DOINA = a specific Romanian folkloric elegy written by unknown authors, “DOINA expresses in a direct manner very diversified feelings: longing, sadness, love, hate against oppressors, alienation, grief, etc.” (Source: Google, Wikipedia). Upon Carolina Ilica’s request we kept in the poem the Romanian version of this word.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Small Prayer

Oh, Lord, take care of my mom,

Because by now she is advanced in age

              While everything’s reduced and taken though,

              While what is easy seems to be so slow

                                     Oh, Lord, take care of my mom!

 

Oh, Lord, take care of my daughter,

Because she is all longsome and alone.

                While being young in spirit and confident

                 Assuming the world’s burden of small weight.

                                     Oh, Lord, take care of my daughter!

 

And in between them too, take care of myself

And do take care of them, my Lord!

                 Because by now we’re just a little heap:

                 A root, a body and a tiny twig.

                                     Forgive us, Lord, the others won’t forgive!

 

Nevertheless, who’s richer among us:

Is it my mom, with her own daughter and granddaughter?

                 Is it my daughter, with her own mom and her grandmom?

                 Or is it me who has a mom and has a daughter,

                                      Being a daughter and a mom at the same time?!

 

 

English version by

Muguraş Maria Petrescu

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Both Slowly and Hastily (a double poem)

a)                  The Mouth which Is Kissed in a Laughter

 

Oh, the mouth

                     which is kissed

                                            in a laughter,

A flower

             of a reddish

                              smell

While this life

                      of ours is,

                                   as if

Death

        were too slow!

 

                     

English version by

Muguraş Maria Petrescu

 

                     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

b)Hastily

 

I offer you the trace of my head on a pillow.

The shape of my forehead thinking deeply of you.

               Hastily coming

               Hastily going

               I leave you, you leave me:

You who are full of my absence

Me imbued with poetry

As a riverside meadow:

                By the rain caressing it from up to down

                                                all over in a feminine way

                And by the river which penetrates it with virility.

Hastily coming

Hastily going

Hastily I might leave this world too.

 

No matter how late by then I shall be

I shall think just like now

And just like when I was 23:

 

                       O,

                       Dear life,

                       I liked all which existed in you

                       But more than that to love

                       And to sing!

 

English version by

Muguraş Maria Petrescu

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Precious Autumn

A precious autumn

                             with red copper and gold.

The sky which is studded with stars

Is the hanging garden of Semiramis .

 

Is the juvenile age bygone?

                                          The juvenile age

Which can do everything!

Your life grew dearer some times more.

 

English version by

Muguraş Maria Petrescu

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Aphrodite

There she is approaching in a flown-sparrow pageant!

It’s the mid of the day which will bring her right here.

On her shoulders her hair in ringlets rise slightly,

These are ringlets to make her feel free.

 

There it is the pageant is stopping sideways

In the wavy and flying green grass like a mane!

Flocks of birds which by now are dead weary

Unharnessed hardly will be.

 

There she is bare-footed, forgetting her sandals!

Like a pillow, curled mint will lay down at her feet

It’s the long and the bare crossed-arms,

Holding her wrapped in white sheet.

 

There she is stepping on the path decorated by grass

With butterflies and flowers, with pollen and bees!

So slowly and thorough as if

Out she is going and not coming back.

 

There it is the grit jumping out in the sunshine

Changing out in a slim violin,

Its long bow interweaves water stream

Springing out from the mountain.

 

There she is stopping seduced by the river

Which is singing and running away from itself!

Like a rain her cloth falls down on her hips

And like the moon she is naked herself!

 

There it is the river flanked in between the two shores,

Cannot jump as it wants to envelope her body!

Yet she jumps down from a hill with tall oaks,

Like an acorn which down falls.

 

That’s all that one sees from the height of the sky

From where great Zeus down is looking at her.

But she doesn’t take care that water

Stays on her breasts like a fry.

 

There she is now closely watched

By this man young of age… whom they call Praxiteles

Yearning for thrills and thirsty of nice

And a robber of models.

 

There he is waiting that she gets out from the waves

She who was born from the foam of the seas!

In exchange he will stand stone-still, while his eyes

Will run to her only one single kiss to steal.

 

For a while, after that Goddess

Sees her own statue and blushes to the roots of her hair.

Cause naked she was caught by his chisels

And is seen by all there.

 

English version by

Muguraş Maria Petrescu

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Aphrodite

La voilà qu’elle s’approche dans son char que les piafs tirent !

C’est le cœur du midi qui l’amène ici.

Sur ses épaules, ses cheveux en boucles lui sautent,

C’est des boucles à épanouir.

 

Le voilà, c’est le char qui s’arrête à travers

Dans les herbes enflées par le vol comme une crinière !

Compagnie des oiseaux à présent fatigués,

À peine vont se dételer.

 

La voilà les pieds nus, oubliant ses sandales !   

C’est la menthe des champs qui s’étale sous ses pieds,

C’est les bras propres et nus et croisés,

Qui la prennent.

 

La voilà qu’elle s’engage sur la voie d’une herbe garnie

Avec des papillons et des fleurs, du pollen et abeilles !

Si légère et soigneuse comme si

Elle ne rebrousse chemin, pour s’en aller.

 

Et voilà que la grève des cailloux qu’au soleil vont jaillir,

Dans un corps d’un violon vont changer !

Tout au long l’archet est fait

Des montagnes à ruisseler.

 

Et voilà qu’elle s’arrête séduite sur la rive

Qui chante et s’enfuit de soi-même à jamais !

Comme la pluie, son vêtement sur ses hanches lui coule

Car, tout comme la lune, nue elle est !

 

Et voilà que cette rivière flanquée par des rives,

Ne pourra à jamais sauter pour la prendre !

En échange elle saute du haut de la colline des rouvres

En tombant comme un gland.

 

C’est tout qu’on se voit de l’hauteur du ciel

De l’endroit où le Zeus tout puissant la regarde.

Pour l’instant elle ne voit que c’est l’eau qu’elle retient

Sur sa poitrine, comme un poisson.

 

Et voilà que maintenant il l’a guette du côté

Le jeune homme… Il s’appelle Praxitèle.

Assoiffé de désirs et du beau

Et voleur des modèles.

 

Et voilà qu’il attend qu’elle en sorte des ondes

Elle qui est née de l’écume de mer !

Il la voit et change dans une statue de sel ; de ses yeux

Un baiser il lui vole.

 

Et voilà que maintenant, après temps, la Déesse vît sa propre statue,

Souhaitant qu’elle en fût à cent pieds sous la terre

Car toute nue on la rend éternelle par ses gouges

El la voit qui n’importe.

 

 

Version française par

Muguraş Maria PETRESCU