POETAS SIGLO XXI - ANTOLOGIA DE POESIA MUNDIAL - Flavia Cosma
ENERO de GACETA VIRTUAL - Flavia Cosma
Appeared in Paulo Monti's Revista Literaria Paralelo 30 - 2 poems
Regăsire
Tu,
Tot atât de necunoscul mie,
Ca stropii de ploaie pe florile-albastre căzând,
Tu,
Tot atât de necesar mie,
Ca aerul pur, strecurat în plămâni,
Tu,
Tot atât de preţios mie,
Ca lumina de aur lunecând prin vitralii
Peste mâinile împreunate-n rugăciune,
Invocând pace, iertare,
Şi mai presus de toate,
Iubire,
Tu,
Vei traversa într-o zi
Pădurile toate şi marea;
La poarta casei mele, trudit te vei opri,
Iar eu te voi primi cuprinsă de sfânt tremur,
Cu ochii plini de lacrimi şi sufletul lăcaş
Dragostelor coapte şi târzii;
O, cerşetorule…
Finding You Again
You,
As much unknown to me,
As falling raindrops on blue flowers,
You,
As necessary to me,
As the pure air, seeping into my lungs,
You,
As much precious to me,
As golden light gliding through stained glass panes
Over hands clasped together in prayer,
Invoking peace, forgiveness,
And above all
Love,
You,
One day you will cross the sea and all the forests,
Weary, you'll stop in front of my gates,
And I'll welcome you, seized by a holy shiver,
My eyes filled with tears, and my soul a nest
To belated, mellow loves.
Oh, beggar…
Appeared in July 2008, in Tertulia Magazine, 4 poems - Passing Through Fire, To Be Sixteen Again, The Eternal Law and Under the Cover of Time.
www.tertuliamagazine.com
To Be Sixteen Again...
How hard it would be
To be sixteen again,
To be suave, fragile and to keep
Your eyes half closed under your lids;
To embrace your knees with transparent hands,
To wish you could return into the warm belly
The one that not long ago
Held you tight, giving you the air
And the nourishment you needed
To grow, to flourish.
How hard it would be
To be sixteen again,
To know, to sense, that your turn had come
To bear fruit, to become a blue cradle;
-The sky opening up at the blessed hour
And letting you see in a flash
Your future lovers and children,-
To feel your body heavy, your breast round,
Your eyes weary, your step slow,
And later on - to face with modesty,
The bitter servitude of the golden years.
Sometimes you would like to stop time in its tracks;
Wishing to be sixteen forever
And have no future.
Appeared in awttar.com, My Mother
My Mother
My mother did not play the piano;
She couldn't find a purpose for
My growing fingers, outstretched,
She wouldn't guide them;
She was unaware
Of the lofty sense of flying,
She had no daring.
My mother did not read
Scholarly books or great literature;
Poetry made her by turns
Laugh or cry;
She would sit quietly humming
Melancholy songs about Jesus,
While the fold on her brow
Obstinately deepened
And her face became
More and more pallid.
My mother didn't know much
About the affairs of this world,
But her smile, like a lamp's flame,
Knew all about everything,
Before fading away, much too soon,
Leaving us holding
All the boundless and hungry darkness
In our arms.
My grandmother knew even less,
But her hands, those sorceresses,
Alternately plaited and unbraided our lives,
Like a transparent kerchief,
A magic word,
A flowering dream
Stretching over the world,
Like a light, gentle breeze.
Appeared in Free Lunch, A Poetry Miscellany, Spring 2008
poetsfreelunch.org
These two poems were translated from the Romanian by the author, with Charles Siedlecki
In the Morning
The din of a passing train
Rushes in through an open window.
The world's rumble
Reverberates through the room.
In her black dress, Grandmother appears,
Holding in her scorched hands
The house with everything in it,
The fragile equilibrium.
And our cramped, young lives.
On coppery branches, with a cracked voice,
A bird sings cheerfully.
The stagnant summery heat lingers
Not yet swept away.
In this manner you come back to us, childhood,
Traveling on your mysterious highways.
In this manner winter also approaches,
On unbeaten, heavenly paths.
The White Minute
Without warning,
A white minute, with its pale, righteous face,
Chases me out of sleep.
What wrong did I do,
What injustice,
Hunts me fiercly
Like a raptor?
Could I have somewhat changed the drenching dream
of blue snow, creaking under foot?
The waterweeds snagged in the horn of the moon?
Or the peacocks, so full of themselves?
to appear in a CAA Anthology to be launched Nov. 16, 2006
Translated from the Romanian by the author, with Charles Siedlecki
Manege Aquatic
Steely horses
Lather on the high seas;
The mind dozes off at the shores;
There is so much peace in helplessness,
The pain cannot pass through,
Neither can the dream.
Translucent walls shelter
The sleep of the unborn.
Gipsy women with hair painted yellow and blue
Lean naked by a tasselled camel,
Between its large humps
A monkey shrieks piercingly,
Boisterous children throng around,
Life lets itself be carried forward
As if it were a banner.
The wave forgets to return to shore,
The sea, a huge pail, waits
For better days.
In the Afternoon
An alder quivers
With its slender branches.
A rock rises lazily
Baking in the sun;
On the road a dog
Pulls its master along
As if carrying a load.
You pine-trees, tell me again
Those light Fairy Tales,
And you wind, send your golden fingers
Sifting through my hair.
Under the fiery eye
Girls change into flowers,
Flowers twist into garlands,
Birds smarten up
For the celebrations.
On silky skies
Clouds fall contentedly asleep;
Profound dreams shelter
The heart - a young bride.
The Rain Descends
The rain descends on ardent, boiling lakes,
Little golden coins tossed from shaken braids,
Salvers spread out shifting
On feverish, idle waters.
The rain descends, a softhearted bride,
into this thoughtless mist;
She enters, pure and trusting
into the hot and hungry waves.
The Lesson
The kids learn the taste of warm blood
In their primordial, solar rhythms;
They frolic on the plains, mating,
Without knowing that they are learning everything,
In front of everybody,
All at once.
Sculpture
The Genii are sculpting the stone
as if
They were seeing themselves in a mirror
Now and then meek faces
Appear from a cloud;
Waves mould the depths of the sea
In their own images.
Shaped like dogs and infants,
Red stones lie under our soles,
sharing with us their serene quiet,
A chubby angel smiles happily
From a heavenly corner of a garden.
So many beings vie with each other,
Watching us from the other world,
Mindful, they urge us on our paths,
Leading us gently by the hand.
appeared in Poesia, Oct. 2005
Night of Autumn
translated by the author and Charles Siedlecki
With a sleepy eye
And without dreams,
And our ears a veil through which
now and then,
Apples ripple, falling into water,
We toil along through autumn's rains.
The screech of headlights at night
Pierces the shivering spine of our thoughts.
We float, or we sink, into green water,
In the viscous mire, foul with memories,
Indifferent lights throb here and there;
The moon entices us with ripe apples' bosoms.
Fate eyes us, up and down.
Noapte de toamna
Cu ochiul somnoros şi fără vise,
Cu auzul perdea, prin care când şi când,
Clipocesc merele, în apă căzând,
Înaintăm încet prin ploile de toamnă.
Tipăt de faruri străbate în noapte
Spinările gândului, înfrigurate.
Plutim sau ne-afundăm în apa verde,
În noroiul vâscos, coclind de -amintiri,
Tresaltă pe alocuri lumini indiferente,
Ne-ademeneşte luna cu sâni de mere coapte.
Soarta ne cântăreşte din priviri.
appeared in Parameter Magazine, issue I - Autumn/Winter, 2005
Resurrection
Famished, the birds fought each other;
They had eaten half of the moon,
But it wasn't enough.
With stars and round symbols,
The day slowly passed through night.
Powerless, I stood into the light,
With all my dreams in my eyes,
undreamt,
And with time on my shoulders.
Sleep, like a pitiless stone,
Spoke to me about death.
Of Late Autumn
Restless leaves chase after me
With a weary, paper rustle.
The fifth season
Hovers in the air
Like a red kerchief,
Like a sigh.
Between light and dream
Spores seize decaying hills
With a mass of downy snow.
Fairy tales sprout virtually from the ground,
As in a Christmas greeting card,
Unreal and beautiful beyond words.
Separation
The fog snatched you from my shoulder,
The sun rises, lightless.
Plants grow, orphaned of their saps,
Dogs quench their thirst in mud.
I want to hide the memory someplace,
To retain whole both the hour and the instant.
I want to feel once more
Your heart, your wing,
Throbbing into the night.
With no understanding
The bells toll slantwise;
The hill bends under nameless crosses;
Time is casting us out.
The queen with smoky smile,
Keeps you in a world of shadows,
A statue of mist on a dead end road,
With many freezing flowers
Filling your arms.
appeared in Absinthe No. 4 June 2005
Translated by Matt Loftin and the author
Leaves of a Diary 7
The sun, tepid salver,
Burned molasses flames into Autumn's lap,
The sky unraveled
In incandescent strips;
The signs began to show themselves at sunset -
It rained red apples on the fields.
Serenity, gorgeous, eternal,
Poured its tender milk over the valleys;
From the houses scattered on the hillocks,
Light rippled in ember eyes.
Sinewy branches, painted with shadows,
Held fastened, arched in the twilight;
A heron soared
Over waters.
My dreams, wild pigeons,
Slept helplessly on wiry beds of fairy tales;
Fleshy, bluish plums
Oozed, burdened by the rains;
Naught and never-
Everlasting, hexed words,
Kept a solemn vigil
Over the silence between us.
Leaves of a Diary 32
In the amorphous city,
Blackened by crimes, passions,
By perspiration dripped in waves on the pavement,
Three generations lull themselves to sleep, humming
A song about the Aegean sea;
In their green dream,
Seated, barefoot,
at the water's edge,
On the lip of history, they contemplate
The time that passes.
The river whispers lazily downstream,
The song trickles through dusty air;
Under cupolas of transvestite churches
The thought gets inebriated from weighty longings,
Hearts start contentedly
In the rustling of blessed willows.
Leaves of a Diary 46
Warmed cotton clouds
Embrace the crooked smile,
The soul crouched in a corner,
The mice that dance over the world,
Wild greens.
Both life and the crying,
Twin stones,
skip on the waves,
Tears are needy, salted;
The line between truth and lie
Hazes beneath moon ray,
Shadows shoulder the space between dream and nightmare,
Our paths disappear in the spring.
Oh! Old age with no boundaries!
How white the sky, the nothing!
How tired the eyes
When searching
always searching,
and searching.
appeared in Unlocking the Muse (TOPS Anthology) 2005
Ask Me
Ask me for something - anything
Ask me for the moon,
For that wearied smell of grass
And the poplar's hands
garlands in the sky.
Ask me for the fire with stars in its belly,
For the whispering of water,
For the apple of gold.
wait for me.
I will give you all of these
When we are born from dust once more
Under the sister stars
We will pace along the pathways
And not one star shall stand beween us
To remember itself.