Marian RUSCU

 

AN OUNCE OF LIGHT

you had chosen for me, God,

when you sent me into the world

to bear a burning flame

instead of soul,

and a bell that keeps tolling

instead of heart.

 

so within me

since my birth there has been an endless fight

between war and peace.

 

I pray to you,God,

when the reconciliation is to come,

at the mysterious hour appointed by You,

through the foliage with its blinds rolled down,

through the boundless and cold silence

slip an ounce of light for me.

 

only an ounce of light.

 

 

I WISH I COULD UNDERSTAND

I wish I could meet friends and relatives,

to touch their thoughts, their souls,

join their destinies,

and share all with them.

I wish I could understand

how dreams adorn,

how the masks worn melt

In the carnival of life at its height.

 

 

I STAY

Do not ask me if I await the future.

no, definitely I don’t await it.

it comes for sure and alone.

and alone and for sure it goes away.

God knows where.

I await the present to turn into the past.

 

I wish I could turn the steering-wheel

to one hundred and eighty degrees.

and stop there forever

and be able to say:

“move on, if you wish, I for one stay!”

 

I AND MY WOUND HAVE REACHED AN AGREEMENT

I and my wound have reached an agreement.

I do not hollow it out,

nor do I salt it,

nor do I rub it in,

nor do I put it to trouble,

nor do I touch it with my finger, either.

despite all the crucifixions, all the temptations

that keep walking round me,

as though allergic rottenness.

and it stays closed.

 

the agreement has never been broken

and, consequently, we, I and my wound,

are still on good terms.

 

 

UNTIL LIFE NO LONGER HAPPENS

you live in every cell of my body

vibrating up to your tit.

 

I bear you beneath my brow,

picture by picture

and I grope in my dull blood

the swelling that bites the spot woven with care,

drop by drop.

 

you will live in every nerve of my body

until life no longer happens.

 

 

A DEFEATED WORLD

A defeated world

hoping for a second life

washes both time and the earth

stuffed with

rotten illusions in the fog

 

a defeated world treading non-existently

sorrows, duties

looking for its grave

is altogether beyond the present

 

a lifeless world around me

 

THEN AND NOW

for a while I was a hero

decorated with kisses and strokes

on the scars of fresh hot embers

good-looking, passionate and living.

 

until yesterday but an echo,

between boundaries of times

strewn with fulfilments and renunciations

 

now a middle-aged man

living between having been

and what is to be

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