post-rapture city, night-drive

Have you ever considered, beloved Other, how invisible we all are to each other? Have you ever thought about how little we know each other? We look at each other without seeing. We listen to each other and hear only a voice inside ourself.

 

The words of others are mistakes of our hearing, shipwrecks of our understanding. How confidently we believe in our meanings of other people’s words. We hear death in words they speak to express sensual bliss. We read sensuality and life in words they drop from their lips without the slightest intention of being profound.

The voice of brooks that you interpret, pure explicator … The voice of trees whose rustling means what we say it means … Ah, my unknown love, this is all just us and our fantasies, all ash, trickling down the bars of our cell!












from: The Book of Disquiet, Fernando Pessoa

first snow

first snow--
great luck to be here
in my own hut


Bashō
(tr. by David Landis Barnhill)

..

moving through dreams

the city is still celebrating.
a maze of lights, faint odour and whisper,
the languid body of human desire.
only i, like a cat who's become one
with the music of her prey,
move through dreams, eyes wide-open,
oblivious of my claws, my smooth arched back.


oh, the stillness of the snowed-in garden.

..

read me from Horace

It's winter-time in the Carpathians and the Euxine
and hoary is the Danube as during the great deluge
and my life's age drifts towards the north.
Read me from Horace time and time again
the poem about Thaliarch, with hearths
wherein woods weep - with old, old wines
turned into amber oil, in flasks.
And I will listen to you softly, ever so softly
while time comes calmly and goes on beyond.


Al. Andriţoiu
(from: Read Me from Horace
tr. Dan Duţescu)

















Look how the snow lies deep on glittering
Soracte. White woods groan and protestingly
Let fall their branch-loads. Bitter frost has
Paralysed rivers: the ice is solid.

Unfreeze the cold! Pile plenty of logs in the
Fireplace! And you, dear friend Thaliarcus, come,
Bring out the Sabine wine-jar four years
Old and be generous. Let the good gods

Take care of all else. Later, as soon as they've
Calmed down this contestation of winds upon
Churned seas, the old ash-trees can rest in
peace and the cypresses stand unshaken.

Try not to guess what lies in the future, but
As Fortune deals days enter them into your
Life's book as windfalls, credit items,
Gratefully. Now that you're young, and peevish

Grey hairs are still far distant, attend to the
Dance-floor, the heart's sweet business; for now is the
Right time for midnight assignations,
Whispers and murmurs in Rome's piazzas

And fields, and soft, low laughter that gives away
The girl who plays love's games in a hiding-place -
Off comes a ring coaxed down an arm or
Pulled from a faintly resisting finger.


Horace (To Thaliarchus)

meanwhile, buried in snow

through the waters of the blind

they say that history repeats itself:
what should we do
with the old communist buildings
which we have grown to call
home?


---


and if we had wanted to burn
them down in the rage
of our late autumn
and if we had wished for
the knife of day
to cut through them
like a seed tearing
through the flesh of time...

yet we stood there, weary
not even holding hands
and no one from the angelic orders
forced our mouths to open
and our flowers to turn silent
against the sun
we who got drunk on waiting
that darkened within us like wine
we who couldn't even remember
why our limbs were numb
and why we cried for words
like ripples through
the waters of the blind

yet we stood there, bewildered,
and failing to notice
that our mirrors, stubbornly
buried in the wormwood of memory
had started to outgrow
the shabby contours of living
that a forest had begun to move
towards the barren centre of our sleep
that we ourselves had come to hang
like giant globes of light
from within the dead body of time.

what should we do

with the old communist buildings
which we have grown to call
home?



come -
let's paint them in the colours
of our pain,
in the dimness of what they call
history
but we simply call
our lives.










































(the doorway of my block of flats)

blue rain in town

Iubesc ploile, iubesc cu patimă ploile,
Înnebunitele ploi şi ploile calme,
Ploile feciorelnice şi ploile-dezlănţuite femei,
Ploile proaspete şi plictisitoarele ploi fără sfârşit,
Iubesc ploile, iubesc cu patimă ploile,
Îmi place să mă tăvălesc prin iarba lor albă, înaltă,
Îmi place să le rup firele şi să umblu cu ele în dinţi,
Să ameţească, privindu-mă astfel, bărbaţii.
Ştiu că-i urât să spui "Sunt cea mai frumoasă femeie",
E urât şi poate nici nu e adevărat,
Dar lasă-mă atunci când plouă,
Numai atunci când plouă,
Să rostesc magica formulă "Sunt cea mai frumoasă femeie".
Sunt cea mai frumoasă femeie pentru că plouă
Şi-mi stă bine cu franjurii ploii în păr,
Sunt cea mai frumoasă femeie pentru că-i vânt
Şi rochia se zbate disperată să-mi ascundă genunchii,
Sunt cea mai frumoasă femeie pentru că tu
Eşti departe plecat şi eu te aştept,
Şi tu ştii că te-aştept,
Sunt cea mai frumoasă femeie şi ştiu să aştept
Şi totuşi aştept.
E-n aer miros de dragoste viu,
Şi toţi trecătorii adulmecă ploaia să-i simtă mirosul,
Pe-o asemenea ploaie poţi să te-ndrăgosteşti fulgerător,
Toţi trecătorii sunt îndrăgostiţi,
Şi eu te aştept.
Doar tu ştii -
Iubesc ploile,
Iubesc cu patimă ploile, înnebunitele ploi şi ploile calme,
Ploile feciorelnice şi ploile-dezlănţuite femei...

Ana Blandiana, Descântec de ploaie

I love the rain, I passionately love the rain,
the mad rains and the gentle rains
the chaste rains and the rains like unbridled women,
refreshing rains and endless boring rains.
I love the rain, I passionately love the rain.
I like to wallow in its tall white grass,
I like to break its threads and walk with them
in my teeth
so that men watching me grow dizzy.
I know it isn't so nice to say,
'I am the most beautiful woman on earth',
it isn't nice and maybe it isn't even true,
but allow me, when it rains, only when it rains,
to say the magic words,
'I am the most beautiful woman on earth',
the most beautiful because it is raining,
and the fringes of rain in my hair become me.
I am the most beautiful woman
because the wind blows
and my dress desperately struggles to hide my knees.
I am the most beautiful woman because you
are far away, and I am waiting for you,
and you know I am waiting.
I am the most beautiful woman because I know how to wait,
and still I wait.
There's an intense scent of love in the air.
People passing by sniff the rain to catch its traces.
In such a rain, one can fall in love in an instant.
All those who pass by are in love
and I am waiting for you.
I love the rain, I passionately love the rain,
the mad rains and the gentle rains
the chaste rains and the rains like unbridled women.

Ana Blandiana
(Magic Spell of Rain)