POEME ROMÂNESTI ÎN LIMBI STRĂINE

Mircea IVĂNESCU

 

lying to her that the garden is sunny

 

still, in order to descend you must first of all, even before

rising, accept the game – and then,

since you henceforth play this game with her, you must explain

to her in the first place how to play, for instance, the first move,

in which you look out of the window, saying that the back garden

is sunny. (therefore, holding her by the hand, you’ll climb down

to watch her reversed face – and the sun on her closed eyes –)

though in order to behold the sun from her window, by the shelves

teeming with books in a language foreign to you, certainly you must

perform other movements – in a street on a deep silent night

on the pavement picturing an obscure

mosaic – and you buy flowers from the old man on the periphery

of the council tower square – blandly waiting under the sullen sky –

shake the drizzle drops off the crumpled paper

in which he wrapped them – and get off the taxi

in an unfamiliar street – and coming up the front walkway,

into a flowerless yard, tell yourself that now that you live

in the town of your vainglories, you may decidedly say to yourself

– as if you produced truth just like that – that it is a discoloured,

but real, rainy sun, and don’t lift your eyes towards them,

the ones waiting for you on the threshold – as you have imagined

your first coming into her world would be – which will be

your own world for a time, woven from her time and place

responsive to your heart.

how agreeable – she is waiting for you,

on the threshold of the glass door – and her being simultaneously real,

by his side – like in your imaginings about the beginning

of a fairytale about an evening in the town of your nightmares – and, accordingly,

the truth being that you can tell her anytime – taking hold of her wrist

draw her by the window – because, look, the back garden is

sunny – despite the heavy rains, merely knowing that you’ll never return

to this very first move towards her, to check

whether she’s looking at you.

 

(English version: Gabriela PACHIA)