Spiridon POPESCU

THE POET

The poet is the only pedestrian not obligated to pay attention to the stoplight. He can cross whenever the thought crosses his mind, on any color. Traffic cops have orders not to whistle at him, and cars have special devices that brake suddenly if they come within ten meters of a poet. If some proud cop insists on treating him like everyone else, the public objects:

„Leave him alone, what do you want with him? Can't you see he's a poet?”

For this reason, the poet is the most punctual person you'll know: he always keeps his date with death, not one minute late.

DEVOURED BY WOLVES

You try to reach me like an autumn wind

forcing the leaves to fall from my brow,

I try to slip my snow into you

to make your wolves hungry,

On a day I can almost see, they will find us both:

me – at the edge of a field, a tree without leaves,

you – in the center, devoured by wolves.

NOTHING ABOUT BLOSSOMS

In creating me,

the snow left my inheritance:

the habit of melting in Spring.

That is why

I can write nothing

about blossoms.

PASTEL

The plum trees have blossomed –

A three – years – old looks out the window and asks:

„Daddy, if we eat green onions,

Will it be Spring in our bellies?”

ESSAY ON GLORY

Before he adorns his head with laurel leaves

The Poet climbs the gallows,

To better appreciate the magnitude of the event.

Then,

After the ceremony has come to an end

He is let down

And born by a thousand ovations

To a common grave.

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL FRAGMENT

I live on the tenth floor, in an ultramodern and ultracentral building

But brother, save your envy:

I'm stuck between two neighbors

Who make every day an ordeal.

The One Above (God) always leaves the faucet running

And drowns my sadness,

Leaves it swollen like the hardwood floors.

The One Below (The Devil) is even stranger:

The smallest little sound makes him bang on the pipes

I don't dare enter „literary history”

For fear the door might squeak

And disturb the imbecile.

ESSAY ON THE FIRE IN ALEXANDRIA

I had a date to meet her in front of the library of Alexandria

(It was the only place in the world I could find

without asking directions.)

When she arrived , her heart was a dancing flame.

I tried to avoid declarations of love –

I knew those words, spoken from the heart, become inflammable.

Still, when I took her in my arms, I could not control myself – „I

love you!”

With the first syllable the fire was already unleashed.

She and the library, consumed in flames, disappeared,

I, the ephemeral, escaped through the eye of the needle…

Today, God pounds his hands against his head:

„I was so naïve, I blackened my halo for nothing –

I thought that if I saved you, you would rewrite the library”.