Bogdan Ghiu

Prologue to the book

I don’t know whom these lines look like

but see, they come here to stretch,

to set up shop and lounge around,

to snooze and let themselves be eyeballed,

slack-jawed, pot-bellied.

They’re tired of transparence and loftiness—

too many things have been glimpsed through them

and taken advantage of.

They’ve come to settle on the tough white paper

and delude the world into error.

                                                                        translated by

                                                                        Adam J. Sorkin and Radu Surdulescu

Poems1 

Too much blank

space for

just

one

poem.

And it’s possible that nothing else is slated to happen,

this poem’s so short . . .

*

*       *

The world dribbling down, rarefied,          The world dribbling down

out of a watertight poem,                         rarefied

frigorific.                                                  from the corners

                                                               of the mouth.

________________________

1The poem’s fear to stand alone.

                                                                        translated by

                                                                        Adam J. Sorkin and Radu Surdulescu

Yeah, Yeah

Just pour lead into my heart.

I’ll be cast as a living letter,

a paragraph,

a clause in the law . . .

                                                                        translated by

                                                                        Adam J. Sorkin and Radu Surdulescu

Now

Now I’m blowing with all my lung power into the sail of this page,

downwards,

to overtake you and your wake.

You’re always the future of my text.

What my words are to take over.

                                                                        translated by

                                                                        Adam J. Sorkin and Radu Surdulescu

From the Beginning (Attempting to Begin)

(The very same words always, some, maybe a few.)

(A glance into the void turns into a thing.)

(A forsaken glance turns into an object.)

(Between you and me a page of air.)

(A pillow of air.)

(A sheet of newsprint.)

Over the floor which admits shadows,

my hand.  (A forsaken glance

on which something’s been written.)

I pass over a piece of cloth, over

a sleeping horse ( : I’m the void

of my own step, its world).

Around me, glances into the void, forsaken

glances.  While I, the thing they

haven’t reached, am risen into life.

                                                                        translated by

                                                                        Adam J. Sorkin and Radu Surdulescu