POEME ROMÂNESTI ÎN LIMBI STRĂINE

Ion PACHIA TATOMIRESCU

The Verb Struts

 

The sprightliness of the house

sparrow choir – the sunbeams

cut the window glass geamul

with infinite beaklike

diamond edges, pin pricks

from the garrulous

unfetterers

of photons…

On the inside of the windows,

the Verb struts,

until it reaches

the snowy margins,

whence it advances mindfully,

on the carriageable, logosable,

and verbous-able

quicksilver side

of the paper sheet,

then flicking out of sight

amongst the red blood cells

within the Poem’s

right auricle...

 

September Hint

 

If you admit I’m your woodpecker, my wing fan

incandescently rainbowing

over your left breast,

if you admit I’m your auroch in your coat of arms,

grazing the meadow of your right breats,

if you admit I’m your young and zebraic wild boar,

rooting the hermetic sheet

of your omoplates, digging small ditches

for cabbages, for the green bell peppers,

for the dark green cucumbers,

for the red radishes,

the early radishes, or the ones as black as the faces

of the women by the pyramids, or for the purpurating beets,

the green tomatoes, awaiting the winter

pickles, for the eggplants committed to September

twilights, but also for marigolds in perennial bloom,

so let’s return to our gruntlings, the craftsmen

in small ditches for the July-August

irrigations, if,

“Dacian Wanderer” –

told me the pregnant Siamese cat

of your ferruginous knee,

earlier this morning –, you remember, don’t you,

“chit-chat and tittle-tattle spread

in Sarmisegetuza,

the Aftercapital-of Immortality,

why wouldn’t you sheepfold me in your tooth arch

like gold nugget crystals

from the Western Carpathians,

to sparklingly spin among spears the blessedness

of all Heavenly countries, to the end of all times,

to the Sun-of-all-Suns, to the Moon-of-all-Moons,

in the fountain-of-all-fountains...?”

And throngs of other questions arose

like swans – whitewise, in strings –,

and throngs of other answers emerged

from the neuron chernozem, like earthworms,

ready for being split into halves,

ready for being arranged

as parallel but opposite vectors,

or ready for ever advancing into ever vertex-opposed

indirections, though meeting

in the small infinity, or in the great infinity,

almost like all our doings, along our daynights...

 

The Fantastic Serpent

 

Mother, what is Time doing here, in our houses,

with His ivory serpents,

with His cruel blizzard upon our love,

over the black stones in bloom... ?!?

 

–...as long as we still have to roam

through so vast an ocean with blue arteries,

as long as we still have to drive the deer’s fawns

into the sunlight,

as long as the pyramids of countless skulls

are drifting below us, under siege... ?!?

 

– Mother, why are the ivory serpents strangling us

at our body’s crossroads,

at our fountains’ crossroads... ?!?

(English version: Gabriela PACHIA)