is love a flame

Te mistuie iubirea? Credeai că-i o păpuşă, Să-ţi faci un joc cu toane, ca în copilărie. Când ea-ţi cerea o fire de salamandră vie, În tainica-i văpaie să arzi făr' de cenuşă. Ea nu stă-n trup, stăpână a cărnii şi-a plăcerii, Înflăcăratu-i spirit, urgie, le consumă; Îşi cată-n noi duh geamăn... şi, de-l îmbii cu humă, Rămâi o biată urnă cu zgurile durerii... Te ispiteşte jindul să-mbraci şi fericirea Cum pui, pentru petreceri, o rochie de brocarte? Dar trebuie-nfruntată cu spaimă, ca o moarte... Căci ea, ca să pătrundă, îţi sparge-alcătuirea, Preface în genune lăuntrul tău, anume Ca să încapă-acolo, cu ea, întreaga lume.

CLXXIII  de Vasile Voiculescu (Ultimele sonete închipuite ale lui Shakespeare în traducere imaginara de Vasile Voiculescu)

Is love a flame? You thought it was a doll,

To play with, like a child, with fickle glee,

A salamander she wants you to be,

Devour’d by the same flame in which you fall.

She is the cruel mistress of the flesh,

And pleasure, as her spirit both consumes;

Twin soul she seeks in our heart's frail bloom...

Don’t tempt her, or you’ll end up in her mesh,

A slag-filled urn of pain. Does your lust claim

To dress your joy as though a party dress?

You dread her like she’s death and nothing less…

For, to succeed, she breaks your human frame,

         It turns you into an abyss, so there

         She and th’entire world will worm a lair.

CLXXIII

by Vasile Voiculescu 

(from Shakespeare's Last Imagined Sonnets, in the fictional translation of Vasile Voiculescu)

trans. Cristina Hanganu-Bresch

Kubla  wrote this poem after seeing my pictures, I am both honoured and grateful:

your hair blown across your face

I see the white of your eyes from a distance I see the hair blown across your face and how you blow this sunset to pieces how your hair shades your face and what I would give to live in that shade under the shade of your hair blown across your face

witness this blown sunset witness too the falling shadows after the shade after the visible white of your 

eyes have shaded everything that lives inside me and now the peripheral night is gathering its 

gloomy shade but what can it know of a face that is shaded by 

hair what does it know of shade and hair and your 

face and the visible invisible white of your eyes

your lips too are covered with the blown strands of your hair that has blown this sunset to pieces 

and has shaded every shade into nothingness and 

how silent everything seems now and how loud this silence 

is