George VULTURESCU     

Dark wind over the grass

marring the green tops like a pitched rag
streaming over the slabs

What if it goes to the village? Who can believe you
when you cry out at the gates:
‘There comes a dark wind across the cornfields!’

‘It’s Uncle Achim’s mare, the one that  has brought forth
a still colt. Like a storm it runs across the stubblefields.
You can’t have seen it: no one has seen it ever since,’
 says John.

It’s a dark wind over the fields. It’s stopped
above the ruins atop and keeps sweeping away
the dust of the walls.

‘ There is no black wind , dear child. There are
rains that cannot fall on the ground: they remain in the air
like some barren mares that keep running with no riders …”

Then you have come back to the fields, all alone.
 You’ve sat down on the hillock and have looked around:
It’s come to you and has slapped you on the face.
Its icy blow’s made your lips bleed and
cut your cheeks; the dark Wind.

Late you’ve come back to the village, to your home. No one’s
asked you questions about your bleeding. No one.

The dark wind exists only for you.

 *
The Hand Gripping the Knife

Today the North has been a skull through which
the wind’s resounded. I cannot get out of it and I
can hear it crying its eyes out:
‘Take me out for a walk’, it orders me. ‘You must take me out
for a walk every night. You too can see that the grass is bluish.
You too can see that the grass is a dream of
the skulls through which you advance.’

I grind my teeth and bite my lips until they start bleeding
to see if I am awake.The skull is already on my forehead,
 like a helmet of hot metal which I can’t take off. In the night, unsteady on my legs I keep roaming with it on my head.
 
‘Heigh, Majesty, whither, the whores beset us at the crossroads.
‘They are not whores,’ the skull gets cross. ‘The North
has no whores, believe me:
they are The Night’s Princesses.’

‘Heigh, Majesty, why are you travelling all alone,’
says to him a Prelate standing by the side of the road.
‘ He’s not a Prelate, remarks the Skull quite upset. He is
the Blind Man of Our Feast: it’s the place where at night we, the skulls, go to pour the lead into the bulbs of the dreams…’

‘Heigh, Majesty, who is dancing with you
 this Night?’ call out clusters of beggars.
‘They are not beggars, believe me:
 you are in the dream of a skull. What you can see will have to  exist, first and foremost, for me’

I cross the bridge among rascals and aliens,
among merchants and the plebs of the streets.
I take my knife off my waist and make my way:
I strike all around. Like some bubbles broken they remain behind me letting the green liquid of their bumps
fall down on the asphalt.

‘You are not a buffoon, says to me the skull, I know:
you’re the dancer with the knife. The Carnival is
for us. You see, over there, in the middle, the Queen
is dancing, take me to her’, it orders me.
‘It’s a whore there, I cry out, can’t you see, it’s a whore.’
There are no whores during the carnival, believe me. Dancing cleanses us. Dance with your knife, strike with it: you can break the skin of the dream, you can get out of it. Only in the North
the hand you write with and the hand you grip the knife with are one and the same…”

                         *

Lying on the grass, in the dross of the night,
I could hear a loud roar as if made by an animal
snorting underneath the clay layers. A stench
of mud overflowed into the night.The North gasping
secreted the oxydes of the growing vegetation. I felt
that the body could vanish from sight, trickle down the grass
like an amniotic liquid. I felt a liquid glance sidelong 
on my body as if the brush of the painter kept trying to add
some scales or wings to me. I felt the mineral ‘oil’
of the glance spread out on my body and shivering I howled to the sky:
Is my lying on the grass what you are in need of, Dear house painter?     

George Vulturescu, Nord si Dincolo de Nord (2001), Editura Dacia, Cluj-Napoca.
Traduceri: Olimpia IACOB