POEME ROMÂNESTI ÎN LIMBI STRĂINE
Ion BARBU
Rhythms for the Essential Weddings
Far end of the world’s axle !
White, concise clock of wonder,
Strike three times
With unmistakable limpid keys,
Under lucid ether
For circles of mysteries !
Year of Gaia, prison,
Shun the inner wheels:
The wheel of Venus,
The heart’s wheel,
The head’s wheel,
Mercury
Melting in the azure,
The Sun’s wheel
The All-Mighty.
I
To the throne of lascivious Venus
Sharply, like all young lovers,
Passionately
I vibrated:
Vaporous
Ritual
A beauty
Arouses
The flesh !
Make room for me in your bracelet
Let me dance and dance,
The bouffe dances
With curtsies
Or mechanical cadences.
Oh ungrateful,
Debauched energy,
You, brute who hastily unleash
The simple group from its orbit,
Venus,
Heart
In minimal undulation:
Aphelian ( )
Perihelial ( (i )
Conjunctive (dodo)
Opponent (adieu !)
II
Venus’ page,
Oral
Parrot !
Within your renegated crystal,
To the foamy
Fra Mercury
Of pure augury,
Over angels, serpents and Heaven
There sounds the ancient:
I-ro-la-hai,
Mercury, gilded planet,
Adorned with two
Lengthy hairs
Bearing eye pouches
On the large and blind
Prying bomb,
Oh Mercury,
Blood brother
Begotten from vivid mystery
And the Maiden Lucifer,
Tilting on chaste waters
In iconoclastic defiance,
A head erected
From the forbidden wave
Over the petrified Century,
Oh select
Intellect,
I haven’t celebrated the wedding...
III
Look, take the third key,
Thrust it into the keyhole – Astarte !
And turn it by one degree
Of a retrograde time,
Throw open the burning gates,
Since we enter
To feast
In the All-Mighty
Sun’s pantry,
The Godfather and the star,
To give us the green breath,
From buckets of milky seas,
At the rainbow’s crumblings,
– In the alcove sparkling ethereally.
English version by Gabriela PACHIA
