When a god swallows me, a living god,
I’ll plunge into the well of his stomach
where I will become a part of his body,
and stink like drink or undigested flesh.
I, That Is, He
He, he was made to be prey,
prey of selected words, –
with a falcon on the last syllable
He, he rejoiced to feel
he is feed
he is food . . .
That’s why he
stretched himself over time
skewered
and the hotter it burned
outside,
the more astoundingly he ripened
inside
From him rose
like smoke from an offering
un-understandable words
like these:
Lord God
helm of wisdom
sword of power . . .
Poem
Sometimes I talk to your face,
a high wall, made of stone
that disappears lazily into clouds.
I shout every noun
I have ever known.
I pluck seconds from the hour
and present them, still beating,
in the agreeable shape of silence
I witness the fate of every planet.
The high wall, made of stone,
opens a great blue eye
then shuts.
What?
To see if I could see
I put long bird
claws, like lashes,
on my antic eyelid.
And a bull’s thick bellow
bedded within my brow
just above my vision,
straight, Chaldean.
– Heeyy, what do you see? tell us, tell us!
– I see words.
– Say what they are, say what!
(Underneath the skylarks, I remain as quiet as before.)
A mute comes to me and asks:
– What?
– Water!
– What?
– Whoy!
Game Delay
Stadium empty, benches bent under bitter light,
wrapped in rain.
One player looks alive, lying on the track.
A line of snails slides from his sleeve
and over the grieving grass.
A wheel with handles
floats at an angle over the leafy peaks.
Another player looks alive,
he lies in a circle around a ball
like the rings of Saturn.
But who will kick the ball
with rings and everything, over the rain?
We will have to bring buckets of lime
and a lot, a lot of chalk.
Night will fall before then,
the locker room has risen to the sky.
The other team has disappeared.
A single shoe lies near us,
cleats up:
you could drink from it, have a nip,
but their mouths and white teeth
have disappeared, unsated
into the dark.
Tennis
Evening falls over the tennis players.
Beyond the fence was dark.
A young girl with legs up to her neck
flutters after an enchanting ball.
I picked a dog up courteously,
and decapitated
it with a single blow. The body
nudged its departed head.
Forward, forward, forward . . .
At the edge of the table, the head fell.
Body up, head down.
What it became, it could not tell.
Give me the racket. Bam! The barking head flies
over the court, while evening begins.
Behind me, the god with a single eye
grimaces and pulls my shins . . .
my arm, shoulder, shadow,
my farewell, my fare, my well,
my fa and re and we and ll . . .
Unwords
It offered me a leaf like a hand with fingers.
I offered it a hand like a leaf with teeth.
It offered me a branch like an arm.
I offered it an arm like a branch.
It leaned its trunk toward me
like an apple tree.
I leaned my shoulder toward it
like a knotty trunk.
I heard its sap beat
tapping like blood.
It heard my slowing blood rise like sap.
I passed through it.
It passed through me.
I became a single tree.
It
a single he.
A LAND CALLED ROMANIA
(Un pământ numit România, 1969)
Cain and Abel
We crown the bones
with the halo of the body.
The right of the firstborn.
The secondborn is left
just the nervous waves
of the spirit.
The secondborn is left
just the beating gong
of words.
The secondborn is left
just the creation of the world
without the world.
He looks just like
the firstborn.
Thus, his
hand holds a mirror.
DOLCE STIL CLASSICO
(În dulcele stil clasic, 1970)
Loss of Consciousness Through Cognition
I.
Because my father and because my mother,
because my older sister and because my younger sister,
because my father’s various brothers and because my mother’s
various sisters,
because my sisters’ various lovers,
imagined or real,
because poor relatives and rich relatives,
because they were all there in my childhood home,
they were all there, only and all for me,
because they all had just woken up
and you could tell,
because they all had faces like they’d just woken up
and you could tell,
you could tell they were there for me,
there in the house where I was born
only a few decades ago,
because they were all there to see me,
to see how I’d act, how I’d react,
but even more than that, how I would prepare to be,
and not wanting to be outdone
I brought all I could with me.
What did I bring?
My translucent pride of lions.
What was it like, my translucent pride of lions?
As so:
like jade,
a white cloud,
soft glass.
They looked as if you could see through them.
Through them, you couldn’t see a thing.
They were as big as buffalo.
Surely as big as buffalo
since their manes brushed my hips.
They were animals, but you could wear them like guns.
Just how could you wear them like guns?
Like this: one put a translucent paw on the left
and right side of my chest,
his translucent tongue licked my sweaty face,
his translucent tongue licked my sternum.
May my mother be my witness:
the lion licked me out of love, and tore my shirt and broke
my rib.
My mother will swear it happened,
because she brought me a new shirt of skin
with a red wound blooming on the shoulder.
And she brought me a new rib,
to replace the broken old one.
My mother will swear,
because when my mother made me,
she made me smart, with spare parts.
What did she make spare?
First,
she made two of the earth I walk on.
If the earth breaks beneath me
my mama sets another under my soles
prepared ahead of time
and also tested beforehand, conditioned
for various cosmic uses.
Another transparent lion hangs from me
with the piquant smell of a man’s underarm,
like a transparent gun
shooting transparent screams.
Not invisible, because you can see through the invisible.
Transparent, because you can’t see through the transparent,
as the transparent is memory, mourning
all that is invisible.
In front of my kith and kin I came
with a transparent pride of lions
on its way to combat invisibility.
The lions rubbed against one another like flames.
There were only men among us friends:
not one lioness with us, not one star.
I stopped in the middle of the yard of the house where I was born.
My relatives all rose into the sky
and sat, white and shining,
like the peak of a new moon
white and glimmering
in a sky without clouds.
The crowd of transparent lions closed in around me.
I laughed, to reassure my relatives,
and they droned timidly,
and thus night began with a meteor shower.
I asked for a cigarette, and my father pulled down a ray of sun to light it.
He came himself, because he wanted to say something to me alone,
something the others wouldn’t hear.
I signaled with the heart of the surrounding transparent lions.
All of them, the lugs, orbited me like a ring of Saturn
moving silently,
and they sat around me like
they should, because on the shield of Achilles were
set the seasons, when Thetis, his mom,
gave him the red-hot shield,
burning the skin of his fingers,
just out of Vulcan’s oven.
Talking to you, my spirit shook.
My father told me what he had to say:
only I heard.
None of you heard what he said.
Nor you.
I let the lions go back to the way they had been.
I bared my teeth and shouted:
– The time when Achilles carried a shield has passed.
In the meantime, I finished the cigarette,
my silver relatives shouted in the sky;
you could pluck the tails of falling stars
with their encouragement,
like a harp.
A translucent lion began to lick my right kneecap.
I liked how it tickled.
That’s why he licked my kneecap,
to make me smile at my relatives.
II.
And finally he came.
He was delicate and very young.
He was full of goodwill.
And it didn’t at all seem he wanted
to confront me.
All the more so, as he seemed to be crying.
His bones were thinner than my bones.
The skin on him was less loved than the skin on me.
He came by himself.
Timid.
Limping from great loneliness.
He shouted in the voice of a young man in love.
He shouted, taking care to choose his sounds.
Suddenly his shout transformed into a greeting.
Thus did he greet me:
– Through that porthole I saw myself on the other planet.
it was unusually frightening,
it was a nightmare.
A single planet, full of wounds,
celestial wounds, uninfected.
– So, you see, I came back, he told me,
and you, why confront me at any cost,
and you, why greet me with translucent lions,
and you, he said, leaning toward my ear,
you especially, why come with all of your relatives
on the planet?
He was unusually melancholic,
strangely cold,
and the whole time
he caused me an odd regret
that I and my lions,
that we, we who came to greet him,
had nothing womanly in us . . .
He told me deafly:
– All my family was choked with fear
when I departed
toward the beyond.
He leaned closer and said:
– So, to tell you the whole story, absolutely everything;
I will try to describe what I saw through the porthole.
– No, I told him.
Suddenly, all my translucent lions turned to him and let their
muzzles gape,
starving,
with translucent, starving
teeth.
– Okay, he said, if you don’t want to know, I won’t tell you.
– I don’t want to know, I said.
– Should I go? he asked.
– How can you go, I responded, can’t you see my sister is in love
with you?
– Call your relatives, then, he said, I’m staying.
– We’re not calling anyone, I said, but stay.
My translucent lions
adhered to one another.
My translucent lions
adhered fast together.
They turned into a shield.
I grew tired and stretched out across it.
– Let me pick you up and carry you on the shield.
– Pick me up, I shouted, carry me.
Soul of Mine, Psyche
An angel came to me and said:
– You are a pig of a dog,
a rabid, mangy pig-snout.
Grass rots beneath your shadow,
swamp gas fills your breath.
– Why? I shouted. Why?
– No reason!
An angel came to me and said:
– Glass is more transparent
than the oldest of your opaque thoughts.
Soon you will die, and worms
will storm your nostrils, your muzzle, your trunk, your snout.
– Why? I shouted. Why?
– No reason, the angel said . . .
Then the angel, ah, the angel, ah, the angel, ah, the angel
through air of gold.
Butterflies of gold
fluttered in the halo of the angel of gold.
It flew golden,
it was utterly, utterly of gold.
It left toward a distance of gold,
where set a sun of gold.
It left toward a distance of gold,
where set a sun of gold.
– Why are you leaving me, I shouted,
why are you leaving, why?
– No reason, it said, no reason . . .
Myth
Unable to die
inapt to be
I run
through unknowing.
It’s hard to accept
that I am as I am.
The place of heaven
is under the earth.
But the starving earth
devours heaven.
BELGRADE IN FIVE FRIENDS
(Belgradul în cinci prieteni, 1972)
To Buy a Dog
An angel came to me and said:
– Wouldn’t you like to buy a dog?
I was in no shape to answer.
The words I would have shouted back
were growls and barks.
– Wouldn’t you like to buy a dog?
the angel asked, holding in his arms
my heart
barking,
letting blood like a tail.
– Wouldn’t you like to buy a d
og?
the angel asked me
while my heart
let blood like a tail.
Vitrification
It has begun to see through you.
Look, eye, look,
you are much harder than before
and more speechless.
I see an animal of great size
lay an egg of great size.
Look, eye, and be afraid.
The souls have tired.
Let’s kiss the bird’s egg
and bid it
farewell.
I see an animal of great size.
Its breath is green
its eyes are verdant
its teeth are green
and its claws, teeth.
Look, eye, look
and bid it farewell.
It began to see through us
some time ago.
I feel it began to see through us
some time ago,
as though someone peered
through us
And toward what, we do not know.
Fear
I could kill her
with a single blow.
She giggles at me,
she grins.
She meets my eyes
with her glistening eyes.
She holds her hand out toward me,
she shakes, grinning, giggling,
her dark hair.
But I – I could kill her
with a single blow.
Now, she starts to speak
soft words, naïve, playful.
She looks at me, curiously,
she frowns for a moment
then
she grins, giggles.
She looks in my eyes
with her glistening eyes.
While I watch her
and could kill her
with a single blow.
Eye Depth
The approaching wave has turned to stone midair
O, even you, my love, have stopped
in total non-movement
And time has a fever
O, it burns me
The moment is set like a pearl
and the wave-drops hang in the air
You, all I can shout, you
and the word becomes visible
slowly, slowly, as one sees the dusk settle,
a word of three letters: you.
The monstrous animal, – understanding –
has stopped, and become visible . . .
Fading
Ah, how happy were the two of us,
no, we were never happy,
but here, dance across my hands,