POEME ROMÂNESTI ÎN LIMBI STRĂINE

 

Gheorghe Mihai BÂRLEA

 

Nănesti
I long for
a slumber covered with dew
and  the scents of the grass
and  the garden come into leaf
and  the house of wood
and the windows half-opened towards the heaven
and the slow river giving light
and the primary school-yard

but most of all I long for the village

Something else
what we miss sometimes
  is neither love
nor wisdom
nor money nor special drink
nor friends
nor the longing that devours
nor pain¾even if all of them sit down to your table
but simply something else
out of which all springs

wastes
everybody believes in you
and everybody revolts

he likes
to insinuate himself into his neighbour’s heart

careful to the noise of the birds
the ravens multiply inconceivably
the reptiles’s legs decrease in height
ready to enter the springs of your blood

the drivers mount the huge hunch of
the camel
until the sun consumes the shirt of the noon

he praises you
and forgets you.

When the day drops
this day 
will never be
 for you again ¾

this want, what will you put in its place ?

you will have to retire by all means ¾
ashamed ¾ in its unlit shadow

your hands are stained by its fall

posthumity
 this cell
still smells
of blood on the walls
after they have cleared of rats
all the smell of bones

The Hunter in Love
…in the shade of the Gutâi Mountain

I leave the words behind
as the deer fly with strides
in the snow

the hunter
a bad marksman
stands still
before the pipe of the weapon

 it seldom happens to him
to fall in love with his game

today his cartridges
have frozen with emotion

he feels that there is something else happening
quite differently and otherwise…

   ***

there is so much snow
that the mountain comes into nothingness
while climbing up towards the sky¾
there is no song of bird
 no word ¾
but the silver of the day that shines

as pure is the love of the bride and the bridegroom
when from the dream they call themselves
to life

               ***

A tree flies after me
with no roots
from grey to white
its bark is maiden-like
or at least it looks so while flying 

feathers with eyes are the birds
huddled up on the scanty branches
and got lost under the sky
until the sun that sets down rises
  
***
the wood has moved under the sun
the mountain is a huge ember
from the eyelash of the sky drips
dust of star on to the canopy of leaves

Translations by Olimpia IACOB