Nichita Stãnescu

 

Burned forest
Black snow was falling. The tree line
shone when I turned to see -
I had wondered long and silent,
alone, trailing memory behind me.
And it seemed the stars, fixed as they were,
ground their teeth, a stiffened nexus,
an infernal machine, tolling
the halted hours of conciousness.

 
Then, a thick silence descends,
and my every gesture
leaves a comet tail in the heavens.
And I hear evey glance I cast
as it echoes against
some tree.
Child, what were you seeking there,
with your gangly arms and pointed shoulders
on which the wings were barely dry -
black snow drifting in the evening sky.
A horizon howling, far from view,
darting its tongues and anthracite,
dragged me forever down the mute row,
my body, half naked, sliding from sight.
In distances of smoke the town afire,
blazing beneath the planes, a frigid pyre.
We two, forest, what did we do?
Why did they burn you, forest, in a toga of ash -
and the moon no longer passes over you?
From the book "Bas-Relief with Heroes"
english translation by Thomas Carlson and Vasile Poenaru.

 

The golden age of love
My hands are in love,
alas, my mouth loves -
and see, I am suddenly aware
that things are so close to me
I can hardly walk among them
without suffering.
It is a sweet feeling
of waking, of dreaming,
and I am here now, without sleep -
I clearly see the ivory gods,
I take them in my hands and
thrust them, laughing, in the moon
up to their sculpted hilts -
the wheel of an ancient ship, adorned
and spun by sailors.
Jupiter is yellow, Hera
the magnificent shades to silver.
I strike the wheel with my left hand and it moves.
It is a dance of sentiments, my love,
many a goddess of the air, between the two of us.
And I, the sail of my soul
billowed with longing,
look for you everywhere, and things come
ever closer,
crowding my chest, hurting me.
 

 

From the book "Bas-Relief with Heroes"
english translation by Thomas Carlson and Vasile Poenaru.