POEME ROMÂNESTI ÎN LIMBI STRĂINE

Lucian BLAGA

 

Women, Blazing Violins

 

Women are violins,

tremulousness reverberating in palms.

I extoll them, write them odes and psalms

for the end of the journey

they take on their Earth spins.

Soft wood, sacred wood !

Women are violins,

speechless vibrations,

blazing violins kindled by bows

into flames and ruins.

 

 

A Voice in Paradise

 

Come, let us sit under the tree !

The heavenly age still blooms above.

Against the wind of truth,

under the generous shadow of the apple tree,

my wish is to unbraid your hair

and let it flutter as if in dreams

towards the earth’s boundaries.

 

What is that voice sequestered in my blood ?

Come, let us sit under the tree

where at the guiltless hour

pairs play the serpent game.

You’re a human, I’m a human.

How hard the punishment must be :

living in the light eternally !

 

 

The Song of Fire

 

In nature’s green and tender fable,

You spread out branches, my beloved, instead of arms,

we created the azure of the nonbeing.

Do you descend from the vegetal fairytale of the wild rose ?

Mind not to catch fire,

as it often befalls the forest wood.

In so many ways, the blaze welcomes the steps

of each eartly being,

waylaying their course and last hour.

You asseverate,

“Nothing and no one ever ignites from a moonbeam.”

And your amorous smile blossoms, presuming

you can defy your destiny any time,

with playful words.

Do you allow my replying beyond time and space ?

Oh, I could recite countless facts,

strange happenings scattered in chronicles,

legendary evidence that proves

such fires, such burning passion

are utterly possible.

 

Everything would flare from everything. The temple from

another temple, stones inflame from stones.

An unnoticeable falling star would burn in the sky’s

frost. The knight would burn, under his suit of armour,

embracing his vanquished woman, the disrobed marvel, by the fireplace.

The glow worms themselves light their love pyres.

Love gushes out from dust and turns the earth into an aura,

to reach the dome of heaven, to cover the firmament.

Still, the end is but seldom more than ashes.

On the vastness and loftiness of light,

God alone sometimes suavely radiates among bushes

failing to devour. He spares and caresses the thorns.

But our passion is different, sweetheart. Different is our ardour.

Wherever the vastness and loftiness stretch,

we burn and do not spare ourselves,

we burn, oh, our flames mercilessly

consuming each other.

 

 

Years of My Life

 

In cryptic space, beyond the reach of proof,

fate chose my being to dwell under the human roof.

Jocund, songful, my parents begot my breath

As consummate old weavers of life and death,

they entrusted me with all fortune approved

they hived up the fair sun and the night, well-grooved,

and coined my life path venturing from their gate.

“This is your predestined way”, said my parents, “your plait

starts from vales to reach the praised heights of the mind.”

I set off on the road into the bleak world’s grind.

I roamed, I beheld, still I wouldn’t curdle.

I beheld, I roamed, still I found no girdle.

Along the lengthy year of yore, so strenuous

’twas but love that settled down my groundless course.

 

(English version: Gabriela PACHIA)