IOANA IERONIM
translated from the Romanian by ADAM J. SORKIN with the poet)
from THE TRIUMPH OF THE WATER WITCH
(to be published by Bloodaxe Books, 1999)
THE MEASURE OF TIME
People and things reappeared on the dial of the days, after hours of air
water fire
earth. Tower clocks of leaves and wind. After the muffled resonance of the
organ, flutes. Evening shadows across bridges.
The movement of the world balanced on the shoulders of a child.
There were days measured in the click of knitting needles. Or in the rivulet
of
trickling wool. There were days ablaze with joy. Or charred slowly by
grownups' tears. There were nights when my forehead was brushed by a ring
of gold, by the rising of the new moon.
Unstained by sin, evening returned in the company of a herd of cattle.
We were together, and then we were not--each of us in keeping with our own
allotted enumeration. Under everybody's ribs, a clock with turning gears:
you rarely could predict the direction of their cycles, their speed.
In the middle of August ever year my father, the first herald, led us by
the hand to
the end of the street to show us the new snow on the mountains.
Another year is passing, he would say.
My eyes transfixed by the white fields, which seemed closer and closer,
I would
hang onto my father's hand, all my vibrant body echoing with the joy of
the
snow. On the street the shadows grew longer and longer.