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Mariana Codruţ
(a wheat field…)
a wheat field love even death one cannot speak about without enormous risks
and yet about freedom freedom –
save our souls!
(upon hope...)
upon hope upon manly songs upon the drunken orgy of words a terrible prosaic cold has descended.
we gathered near the walls our faces deadly pale in the suddenly acrid darkness then we offered up our prayer of faith.
Eulalie in the Summer Garden
from the solitary nest of swirling water Eulalie the graceful and peerless progresses directly into the garden. she presides over groups of youths unregistered at the office hence exceedingly free. she presides over groups of youths exceedingly saddened by their freedom. a splash of light falls upon them from Eulalie whom if first he hadn't met Ermelinda Tuzzi Musil would have called Diotima: she discourses with such conviction about poetry about love and about other such ineffables in a world used to physical touch and the exclamation, "that's it!"
as it happens I too believe in ineffables, I couldn't not become close to Eulalie. but (O Goddess, enhance my feeble powers!) Eulalie had just been abandoned by her lover. she would talk little, from time to time she eat pieces of bread she tore from a basket set right on the gravel of the garden.
the garden once had been a sea; when the sea withdrew into the inner ear of the earth four or five iron tables with chairs which some contemporary writers were seated in as well as a few readers emerged into the light, not far away a residue of water still remained where the wind irresolutely herded the remnants of a civilization of calico motley. the wind wasn't golden but could take a joke: it would toss its heads –some private cosmos – from left to right and from right to left keeping the rhythm of the depths of the sea.
Eulalie would tear the bread and give each of us a piece or two. her gesture had the force of a conjunction - it bound us together. so we were all eating plain bread washed down, with small sips of vodka. crumbs would gather in the strands of her white hair shining defiantly on her robe out of a Greek tragedy but the gesture of shaking them off seemed as impossible as making one's way back home (while the latter seemed more impossible than a journey to Siberia).
at the next table Sofian was reciting from Sofian. when he stopped a reader pulled out some notes and read: "In love, the devil's own part is purely and simply everything that is not love. You will also sense his presence, his immovable power, behind the eyes of the being devoid of love".
the question is (said a reader bluntly) what right has the unloved to tell others about love? the wind italicized the woman's words with a temperamental blast: our plastic glasses were blown over. we shut our eyes, when the gust of wind had passed we stared at one another: we had faces of satin velvet kid leather smooth mother-of-pearl verdure arcimboldian faces and in the landscape, a pair of holes – out of them a special light lifted high its oversensitive apparatus, pitched its tents. in the afterglow remained a world of fragments like after the mysterious disappearance of the gypsy camp from the back alleys of my childhood, leaving behind colored potsherds and broken glass rags and shells half-burnt brushwood. - we all seemed circumscribed between a point on the left and a point on the right. we seemed fragments of a stammering elliptical discourse.
Eulalie - oh! Eulalie was so deeply sad that her lover had abandoned her! we didn't say anything. we'd just bite our bread. one of the boys at our table- like her lover the trumpeter – had short-cropped hair: several times Eulalie reached her hand across the table and stroked his bristly hair with such tenderness that tears came to her eyes. we all suddenly looked away as if we'd surprised her in the act of love.
out of the blue the boy became furious and turned to the reader's table: And you? hypocrite lecteur – you who prefer the description of a landscape to the landscape and the narration of a drama to the drama - who measure space in typographical signs and time by the birth and death of the Character - who live with Karenina's heart until you find Susan's more enthralling but eventually betray it for the throbbing muscle of a valiant policeman – whose side are you on? ART THOU AMONG THE LIVING?
we went on eating bread washed down with small sips of vodka. after a while Eulalie read us a poem and we ail felt the need to touch her with our hands. only the readers fretting nervously on their chairs scoffed at the expression "my red rage". Eulalie wouldn't give them the time of day.
afterwards with her red rage yet intact she dragged me along with her through several bars hugging the bread in her arms: but nowhere was the trumpet to be heard. it wouldn't tattoo the warm flesh of the May night with its shrieks.
later Eulalie left me at a taxi stand. with a hazy glance of stupefaction I followed her wavering silhouette (as if she'd forgotten her center elsewhere) splitting the light showers of the street.
(love is permitted...)
love is permitted provided that it bears fruit and doesn't grow all-consuming (it readily sinks into mysticism).
and withdrawal into oneself is also tolerated as long as it's performed in an appropriate place according to the proper schedule. even death is permitted but only if it comes without a fuss and doesn't pass by the city hall.
(from my corner...)
from my corner like a uterus that refuses me only death appears worth the debate.
I cannot laugh
but where are we headed, the nightingale goes on singing in the huge belly of black felt. fingers snap softly ransacking the molasses light. here are the tragic slums and the fields of fear. the blood-red gleam on distorted mouths. we stare hypnotized by the gun aimed dispassionately at the Latvias of the pink and white world – those which exist and those which don't exist; those whose moan of terror is cloaked with tender slaps on the buttocks and songs of praise; those living under the sign of rape blazing brightly on the white stars (down with the pandering of the cosmos!)
I cannot laugh, guilty. I the dreamer the helpless visionary, the gasoline can with a beer-foam head. I the avenger free as a horse galloping in a text suffocated by parentheses. guilty, pink and white the Utopia of a slit in the huge belly of black felt.
[poet's note: January 1991 - the bloody incidents provoked by Soviet troops in the Baltic states.]
(a wind of liberty is blowing...)
a wind of liberty is blowing stripping our flesh to the bone - once again nontransparent we populate the black air of the public squares.
above us a June sky enamored of metaphor (the snails in the garden riding tomatoes strawberries - an ox-heart tomato freshly picked).
grant us the sky and faith in you - may the bountiful breast of hope prove ample for us all.
(alive and warm...)
alive and warm in my heart is death, only death. it fills my cells with blood; it lends color to my cheeks flushed with hope; generously, it offers me ecstasy; it impels me into the day as into a warm sea: a hysteria of golden mud.
only it illuminates me. only its enchanted eye, always trained upon me, can husk me from my reason: I am a prey to sarcastic mornings and soft nights, oh, the dreams of flesh and blood, of nightmare and of snow, emptying me of my feelings, my exhausting, stupid, natural feelings.
the ineffable and the stifling. made pregnant by dreams, by the measureless sight, my spirit becomes eternal. ave, death!
(words are a boundless sky...)
words are a boundless sky.
I could say that all's well in heaven- but here She comes a propagandist for love: hey, look, don't let yourselves be taken in by the folkloric props.
words are a land full of too many pledges.
I bathe in it I send forth roots like a tuber in the ground. I embrace the sun.- but She is the sun She a negotiated word a rattletrap a uterus with auricles and ventricles impregnated solely by syntax.
Poems by Mariana Codruţ translated by Adam J. Sorkin and Radu Andriescu
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