Liviu Ioan Stoiciu
(translations by Adam J. Sorkin and Magda Teodorescu)
ON OUR SIDE
OF THE NATURAL WALL
Mutable, exposed to
the winds of the air. On
the platform at the railroad station, where there's a slow
train in the morning and
a slow train in the evening: where a gypsy makes
his bear dance. With his little brats
impatiently hanging around, chasing
boredom away: looking up and down
the calibrated iron rails, the thermometer scale filled with oil-spattered
weeds. As we look
further on, we look deeper into
the unknown, exactly at
6:00 PM when the station master receives tablets of commandments from the
hand
of the devil, a big boss here,
and in an ear-splitting voice reads out through his bullhorn
what is to come for everyone. In the isolation of these
last years.
A reality of
the proud. Stone against
stone, tearful hearts, my sister from
Panciu, overbearing, kisses us farewell on both cheeks
as we part, permeated with the aroma of the cellar, with her green
skin: her burden
derives from a mistake of some
ancestor...
FAR IN THE
DISTANCE
I'm not interested in your deeds but in what
you believe:
the past
is entangled in the future... A heavy joy. How
much I endured nobody ever asked:
dust covered me, only dust... The dust,
the dust. Dust and fine, fine powder.
It was hard. Grinning: the ax
is still there, embedded
in the beam of the house, immovable, that sickness should never return...
Poor miserable
mother: she made
friends with the storm, how
she clung to the idea that you'd come back with her... Let it be. Far
in the distance... He rises to fill the glasses: we must
drink at parting in order to meet again! All around us,
the flies: "sing, sing in flight." More
cautiously: the time
is not yet ready. In the fishermen's association: of
those who'd seen a bear
in a vision... The color
of the earth clings to us. It makes
a meaningful mark. You know
so few things. Is it a good sign? Yes, it is. About what happened yesterday:
where
are the landscapes with the destinies
of yesteryear? Of those who have departed: before... Dead. With
grandiloquence: where are... There follow embraces,
embraces and dancing. On
the island:
under the very same continuity of
our makeup... Tomorrow.
A VISION
OF GLORY
In the illusory silence of evening, the souls
of our parents, just returned from the fields, out
in the summer countryside straggling through
the trees into the yard, now home, chirping according to the
forgotten law: the puppies yelping at them, the children
throwing stones, too... It's an atmosphere auspicious for
passion. The pathway, with its diversion,
followed during dance... Oh, those acts of ardor and
belief of our
parents... In the stable, the cow. The sad
cow: barren of milk.
A motion, a rotation, and a
very peculiar species of lizard...the ones which think
for us: hairy, morose, mounted high
on the hill in the center, in the beehive, all around Jesus, the mediator
between heaven and earth.
The double window. Framing
a man, painted
in modern fashion, standing: because of the booming of the valleys
I couldn't hunt, because of the lunacy of the skylarks...
Behind
he is lighted by a light bulb: turn it off, so many things are vanishing...
To what good? The rusty mailboxes themselves
deliver empty envelopes. Around
the corners, new obstacles: the shops, arrogant. They're
taking inventory, a radio plugged in
to the electric wind crouches on its paws... The swallow. Like lightning:
all over town. It
alarms me: it slices across my path. I'm superstitious. The swallow
comes straight from the fortress
of... Trifling with things. A good
character. The second floor: a young woman is dancing with another
young woman. Fatally. Freedom and
Captivity: Against the earthly attraction. A song
the bees sing after every earning. Glittering
into the glasses once, with wine on the table
of the poor...