With a simple flower, the heart divides
In two, the world.
translated by Marguerite Dorian & Eliot B. Urdang
20th Century Romanian poetry
Inscription on the Highest Tower by Ion Pop
Implore
cry out
scream
until
your
howl
begins
to make
itself
heard
translated by Adam J. Sorkin & Livin Bleoca
Here And Now by Ion Pop
A man’s brain
intact at the sidewalk’s edge
at Liberty Square
There with its blood
and a loaf of bread
Between a few candles
Like an altar decomposing
I’m writing about it here and now,
so later I can’t say
I never saw it.
translated by Adam J. Sorkin & Ioana Ieronim
Poem by Nichita Stanescu
Tell me, if I caught you one day
and kissed you on the sole of your foot,
you’d limp a bit afterwards, wouldn’t you,
for fear you might crush my kiss?
translated by Adam J. Sorkin & Anca Peiu
Largo by George Bacovia: posted for Mariana Catalina whose taste may have changed
The music made every atom ring . . .
Longing for you, and for another world,
Longing . . .
A nameless misery
Hung
Over man . . .
All pondered their lives,
Their vanishing.
The music sentimentalized
Exhaustingly,—
Longing for you, and for another world,
Longing . . .
The music made every atom ring.
translated by Peter Jay
I Am the Spirit of the Deep by Nicolae Labiş
I am the spirit of the deep
And in a world I live that’s not like yours,
The world of potent alcohols
Where only
The leaves of meretricious helplessness are withered.
I rise up to your world
On nights so quiet and so clear,
And then I light big fires
And treasures I beget
To amuse you all who understand me.
Then I descend again through strenuous vaults
Into the wonderful, bright water.
I am the spirit of the deep
And in a world I live that’s not like yours.
translated by Dan Dutescu
Zero by Ion Vinea
Moon letters in the sand silence
shine on me with your hand to your heart
Diana dust-blown name Diana
souvenir, willows with white teeth
still cackling today–
it’s so still that all the fragrances
wriggle like cats.
translated by Julian Semilian
Wheatfield by Lucian Blaga
The grains burst from too much gold.
Scattered around red poppy drops–
girl in the field,
eyelashed as long as barley stalks,
gathers bundles of clear sky in her gaze
and sings.
I lie in the shadow of poppies
Without desires, needs, remorse.
I am flesh and dirt.
She sings.
I listen.
On her warm lips my soul is born.
translated by Andrei Codrescu
The Flower-Eater by Gabriela Melinescu
You arrived with sixteen gladioli
to pay respects to the dead.
Under my gaze, the colors live
a secret life.
For food we need only
beauty on a plate.
In the morning: saffron.
For lunch: violets with mussels.
In the evening: pollen from sixteen gladioli.
Food is love as yet unborn.
On the table, among your flowers,
the body of the Lord,
offering itself eternally to all.
translated by Adam J. Sorkin & Inger Johansson
from Lisbon by Liliana Ursu
Truth is beyond the song of the free bird,
beyond the dreaming flesh.
To recognize it
beneath this most refined of identities,
you’d have to tear the face from it
by its skin.
translated by the poet, Adam J. Sorkin, & Tess Gallagher
Leonard Durso 