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)
WORKS AND DAYS
I stood at a wary distance watching the huge cast iron cauldron in which
my
mother was boiling soap in the courtyard. My mother was arranging it just
so, was casting spells over it; she would grasp it at full boil and lift
it from
the soot-blackened tripod over the fire, then she lowered it to the white
limestone pebbles to cool.
Soon the soap could be seen starting to coagulate in a yellowish layer;
a thick dark
liquid remained beneath. ("What is it you want here?" I could
hear their
voices. "You're not to touch..."). Inside that kettle, a poisonous
brown
eye.
My mother had poured in caustic soda from a glass jar where the poison grew
into
crystals that clinked as if frozen, like in the land of the Snow Queen where
the only word you could not make was Eternity.
On the belly of the jar my father had drawn a death's-head and crossbones
(every
once in a while you heard about somebody in the village, a child or a big
person, who had drunk some by mistake--it was awfully serious--and you
never knew...).
I was frightened by this. It was a mystery to me how my mother--with her
silken
hands and her pretty rings, her dainty hourglass waist, her fair face--could
come so close to the fire, to all kinds of boiling liquids sharp edges poisons
various sorts of dangers, splashing streams of hot melted lard, bubbling
tomato sauce, fires under enormous stew pots, spattering drops of preserves
that would burn you. My mother held fire in her hands, so it looked like
sometimes.
Even after I waited and waited to taste the pink foam of rose preserves
from a
saucer, it was still warm, but my mother stretched her arms out and stirred
the
intense bubbling core of the boiling.
In my mother's quick motions, there glimmered the powers of a witch. "Go,
go
and play," she told me.
Maybe Mama liked it...this world of dangers? I sat on a box, nearer the
door.
"Well, you can look on from there, so you can know how, too, when you're
in your own home, when you've become big!"
Me, big? Oh, no, never.
A curtain lowered itself over my eyes, visions of foxes, words that meant
to snatch
me in their claws,
burning rivers, the fold of a dress in flames, knives biting deep into the
hand. No
no! I opened my eyes.
Like a flame herself, my mother went on with her work, farther away.
From my cool riverbank I stared at her, a goddess: of fire / danger...
NO!