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Nichita Stănescu
Everyone feels confident in his own lonely solitude. Among the self-confident loners glasses get clinked, cheeks kissed, flowers bestowed— the death of a plant turns into a gift for a feast— until I come to wonder if on his feast day the god will not present to his goddess my head as a cut flower —my death an indelible souvenir.
translated by Adam J. Sorkin and Anca Peiu
Tell me, if I caught you one day and kissed you on the sole of your foot, you’d limp a bit afterwards, wouldn’t you, for fear you might crush my kiss?
translated by Adam J. Sorkin and Anca Peiu
The sea was calm and blind, like a child with a leucoma on his eye who reaches out his right hand as if he might touch something guilty with it. In a streak of silver, the moon had cut the wide water in two solitudes. Then it was that I told myself to walk barefoot along that dreamlike edge toward the iris of the moon. I began to walk barefoot along the dazzling knife edge when, one by one, my feet bloodily sliced their soles on it. I was walking on the long knife blade before me, slowly my right leg was sliced, slowly my left leg was sliced. I went ahead, and then my belly, my breastbone, my windpipe slowly were sliced in two on the edge, my mouth, my nose, and that spot between my eyebrows were sliced in two. To my right the sea ran red from my blood, to my left the sea ran red from my blood. Half of me fell to one side, cut away, half of me fell to the other side, cut away. The moon had vanished, the knife had sunk, the sea was red and calm, glassy and dazzling.
translated by Adam J. Sorkin and Olimpia Iacob
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