THREE POEMS

I

Jesus and Magdalene

Jesus hied to the village with his thoughts roaming
"Sin itself lay in her eyes
and only death
Lay in her hand and in its burning clasp-
And yet, I cannot understand,a ray playing in her eyes
Cried to me and, dazzling, called:
God is within me too!"

Jesus hied to the village and the sun to dusk...
Jesus was dreaming-
And his eyes dwelt for a moment
On the smooth
Fens that were hiding the Jordan behind the reeds...
A wave of kindness drowned his face in a minute:
"Oh, the divine sun, it blinds you with its light E'en when it reflects itself onto the mud.."

II

Lot

I have seen many and sin-breeding deeds
profaning the light and the wind,
and misunderstood customs, and fire games in the city.
Naked people have I seen in rusty-copper green lakes
kissing silvery swans.
I have seen, fear-stricken, in front of the gate,
Girls dancing their whiteness off
for long nailed voivodes-
and I have seen priests in linen clothes intoxicating
the beggars with the wine the dead have been washed with.

I have seen women setting their seed on fire
their mission cast between two eternities like an insult,
their breasts-ripe fruit with no milk, no milk within,
their breath killing bees and herbs.

I have seen transparent guests on the shore of blood:
children who will be delivered but are not desired
(if you stop your ears up
you can hear through spheres their bitter thirst,
their dumb murmur at the world's windows,
and their song of relief
when they find entrance
in trees, dogs, and in birds).
I have heard many and sin-breeding words
profaning the light and the wind.

Alas, sons of the cities, you think that
no one has seen the sun ever,
and that clear light is nothing but a tale.
Your questions stir the depths,
and you hurt with stones the voiceless eyes of the wells,
but you cannot guess from their silence
the unexpected ending.

Alas, sons of the cities, in any deed
you deny the Earth its heavenly descent.
You haven't feasted the angels come with the Eucharist,
you haven't cleaned their dusty wings,
but scolded them instead-cruelly plucking their feathers
and bedizened in them, you dance and dance
around the golden neighbourhood of the accursed calves.

It will not be seven days, it will not be seven days.
Woe is me that I have to wait.
My flocks of sheep and my live coals
will sink into the sea.
I can hear my dogs barking from the bottom of the sea.
Alas, my God, for I have to hold my words
when I strip naked.
My woman shall turn into a salt pillar
when looking back.

III

Psalm
(vol. "The Great Transition")

Always grief to me have been your concealed solitude
But God, what was I to do?
I played with you as a child and
Let imagination take you to pieces like a toy.
Then the untamed grew stronger within,
my songs died away,
and without ever having felt you close
I lost you for ever
in dust, in fire, in air, and on waters.

From sunrise to sunset
I am all clay and suffering.
You have confined yourself in the sky as in a coffin.
Oh, weren't you a closer kin to death
than you are to life,
you would speak to me. Right from where you are,
within the earth or within the tale- you would speak to me.

Show yourself among the thorns here, God,
so that I should know what you want of me.
Shall I catch in the air the poisoned spear
thrown by the other from the depths to wound you beneath your wings?
Or there is nothing that you want of me?
You are the mute, still identity
(a round itself is a),
and you ask for nothing. Not even for my prayers.

Look, the stars are coming into the world
along with my questioning sorrows.
Look, it is night with no windows outside.
What am I going to do from now on, God?
In you I take off my mortal flesh. I take it off
as if it were a coat left on the way.

Translated by Liliana Mihalachi, University of Suceava (Romania), 4th year of study (Philology, English-Romanian)