POEME ROMÂNESTI ÎN LIMBI STRĂINE
Lucian BLAGA
Eve
While handing the apple over to Eve, the serpent
spoke to her in a voice like tinkling silver bells
from amidst the leafage.
But then he also happened to whisper
something in her ear
softly, most softly,
something the Scriptures don’t breathe a word about.
Nor did Lord God catch the full whisper,
although He was eavesdropping.
Nor would Eve confide it
to Adam.
Ever since that time, woman’s eyes harbour a secret
and flutters her eyelashes as if to say
she has knowledge of something
we are ignorant of,
something nobody is aware of,
not even Lord God himself.
The Spring of Night
Most beauteous,
your eyes are so deep and pitch-black that at night
as I lay with my head in your lap
meseems
your unfathomable eyes are the spring
whence the night mysteriously flows over valleys
and mountains and fields,
enwrapping the earth
in a sea of darkness.
So deep-dark are your eyes,
my light.
Legend
There was radiant Eve
standing at Heaven’s gate.
She gazed at twilight’s wounds healing on the vault
and, dreamily,
she bit the apple
temptingly furnished by the serpent.
Unwittingly,
a pit of the cursed fruit stuck between her teeth.
Ruminative Eva blew it into the wind,
but the pit vanished into the ground, sprouting.
There sprang up an apple tree – others followed
along the stringing centuries.
And one coarse, stout trunk
was the ground
for the Pharisees masters
who carved the cross of Jesus.
Oh, the black pip cast to the winds
by Eve’s white teeth.
Song to the Wind
“In love nobody, nobody keeps
their word, no victor’s grace.
The only true close embrace
is the earth’s firm encircling grimace !”
Thus sang the harrowing
wind by my side, billowing
to the right now to the left,
by my side the wind wallowing.
Ceramics
Like pitchers born to quench the thirst,
maidens radiate youthfulness from contours
as if meant to slip from embraces.
They are forged form blazes, carved from water.
Brisk, unvanquishable pitchers.
We grasp them in our thoughts, through our eyelids.
You indulge in illusions of capturing them,
though the deceitful play proves a lure.
(English version: Gabriela PACHIA)