POEME ROMÂNESTI ÎN LIMBI STRĂINE

Grigore VIERU

Among the Words

 

Words suffer their own tragedy.

There is a struggle for life

Among them.

Some new words show up

And swallow the others,

Older and tender.

Take nylon as an example,

Like a spider

It absorbs our hemp,

Honest and shabby as it is.

As if by accident,

The tip-up truck

Crushes the hooves of our harmless horses.

And in no more than a Sunday

The television

Can wither the grass

Of a whole tuneful grove.

Oh,

And the cancer

Multiplying itself

In all the words

Which are not called

Cancer.

 

Naturally,

These more recent words

Might be torn up one day

By the ones to come.

 

Nevertheless, there are never-dying words :

MOTHER, MOTHERLAND, YEARNING.

Oh,

The air rustles

With them !

 

If you raise them to your ear

Or to the roof of your forehead,

You can hear, as if in a cowrie,

How they were spoken by our forefathers,

Our great-grandfathers.

This is perfectly true :

The body perishes

While the soul lives on.

 

 

The Poet

 

And then

step down

from the green tree

from above, beneath the sky,

with the nightingale’s egg on your lips.

Paint it red

with your own blood.

The egg

that had been swinging

on the branch of your motherland.

And put it

on the sacred table of yours

against which, at dawn,

you lean your forehead.

Between your old mother

and your little children.

 

“The song has risen from the dead !” –

say that secretly

at midnight.

“It has truly risen !” –

will your old mother

and your little children say.

And then, in the morning, when the sun

cracks the shell

of the blue sky,

your children will wash their faces

with the nightingale’s red egg

and with your parents’

engagement ring of yore.

 

And the song will embrace the Earth

its life treading death.

 

 

A Short Ballad

To Marin Sorescu

 

All the women loved me

to distraction.

I felt strong and secure.

Like Manole, the Master Mason,

I dared

to raise an edifice

that would last eternally.

I started my work

and summoned

all of them :

Maria, Ana,

Alexandra, Ioana...

The first to arrive

is going to be immured.

Yet, from all the women

only one showed up :

my Mother.

“Haven’t you called me,

my Son ?!”

(English version: Gabriela PACHIA)