Molded in gold by C. Brancusi


High-signed Orion blesses you
in the sudden wind.
A tear shedding above you
its high and holy geometry.

You lived once on a sea bottom
and circled closely the solar fire.
Your cry sounded from floating forests
over the first waters.

Are you a bird? A traveling bell?
Or a creature, an earless jug perhaps?
A golden song spinning
above our fear of dead riddles?

Living in the dark the tales
you play ghostly reed pipes
to those who drink sleep
from black subterranean poppies.

The light in your green eyes is
phosphorus peeled from old bones.
Listening to wordless revelation
you are lost in flight in celestial grass.

You guess profound mysteries
under the hewn domes of your afternoons.
Soar on endlessly
but do not reveal to us what you see.

Lucian Blaga ( May 9, 1895 – May 6, 1961)

—Translated from the Romanian by Andrei Codrescu

via


(from Lauda somnului, 1929)