Autumn came so please cover my heart with the
Tree shade—or yours so it won’t wither.
I fear that perhaps I won’t see you sometimes
That I’ll grow sharp wings up to the skies
That you’ll hide within a foreign eye
Which will close with a bitter good-bye.
And then I go near the rocks and shut up.
Take the words and drown them in the sea.
I whistle the moon and rise it and turn it
Into a big love.
Only my life will die for me, in truth,
sometime.
Only the grass knows the taste of the earth.
In truth, only my blood misses
my heart when it leaves.
The air is tall, you are tall,
my sadness is tall.
There comes a time when horses die.
There comes a time when machines grow old.
There comes a time when cold rains fall,
and every woman wears your head-
and clothes.
There also comes a huge white bird
and lays the moon in the sky.
Nichita Stanescu
By Nichita Stanescu
Silence strikes the tree trunks, upon itself retracing,
turns to distance, turns to sand.
I have turned my only face toward the sun,
my shoulders scatter leaves in this racing.
Cutting through the field - up on two shoes
my horse leaps, steaming, from the clay.
Ave, I am turning to you, I, Ave!
The sun has burst across the heavens, crying.
Stone drums are sounding, the sun grows,
the vault of heaven, alive with eagles, before him,
collapses into steps of air, and glows.
Silence turns to blue wind,
the spur of my shadow grows
in the ribs of the field.
The sun snaps the horizon in two.
The vault of heaven pulls down its dying prison cells.
Blue spears, with no returning,
I discard my visions, both of them -
they meet him, sweet and grave.
My horse rises on two shoes.
Ave, tide of light, ave!
The sun ascends from objects, crying,
shakes the borders, voiceless and grave.
My soul meets Him, Ave!
My horse rises on two shoes.
My pale mane burns on the wind.
From the book “Bas-Relief with Heroes”
english translation by Thomas Carlson and Vasile Poenaru.
Unwords
He offered me a leaf like a hand with fingers.
I offered him a hand like a leaf with teeth.
He offered me a branch like an arm.
I offered him my arm like a branch.
He tipped his trunk towards me
like a shoulder.
I tipped my shoulder to him
like a knotted trunk.
I could hear his sap quicken, beating
like blood.
He could hear my blood slacken like rising sap.
I passed through him.
He passed through me.
I remained a solitary tree.
He
a solitary man.
My hands are in love,
alas, my mouth loves -
and see, I am suddenly aware
that things are so close to me
I can hardly walk among them
without suffering.
It is a sweet feeling
of waking, of dreaming,
and I am here now, without sleep -
I clearly see the ivory gods,
I take them in my hands and
thrust them, laughing, in the moon
up to their sculpted hilts -
the wheel of an ancient ship, adorned
and spun by sailors.
Jupiter is yellow, Hera
the magnificent shades to silver.
I strike the wheel with my left hand and it moves.
It is a dance of sentiments, my love,
many a goddess of the air, between the two of us.
And I, the sail of my soul
billowed with longing,
look for you everywhere, and things come
ever closer,
crowding my chest, hurting me.
Nichita Stanescu
From the book “Bas-Relief with Heroes”
english translation by Thomas Carlson and Vasile Poenaru.
