Dorin Tudoran

Pro Domo

Let it be known:

      I can fail

      My image—

      never.

Such is the excuse

for all these scribblings.

                                                                        translated by

                                                                        Adam J. Sorkin and Ioana Ieronim

Glory to the onion!

The glory of the onion

is to make us shed

tears.

What it cannot

hope to do

is to make us cry.

Therefore I say

joining our boisterous

contentement:

                        “Glory to the onion!”

Translation by Marcel Corniş-Pop

The Joy of Writing

You hop on one foot

it’s wooden

you pummel your palms

that is, you applaud

until your poor prosthesis

is pulverized into

a pile of splinters

you cry with ecstasy

you howl with fear

and your neighbor taunts you:

“Don’t fake it, my friend;

I know you’ve got a glass eye!”

“Which?” you ask him

“That one!”

“How could you tell,

Mr. neighbor?”

“The human gleam.”

You sharpen your pencil

you enter once more into that frame of mind

somebody

with a sense of absurdity

called the joy of writing

and you remind yourself for the thousandth time:

“You don’t need to write

unless

you can’t live

without it!”

Again

you sharpen your pencil

you liberate the vein of carbon

from the clenched wooden jaws

and then

you stab the black HB point

straight into your eye

you draw inside it

a thing

a creature

whatever flits through your mind

you shed tears

you have a good cry

and you shout back at your neighbor:

“Liar!”;

or, better:

“Devil!”

                                                                        translated by

                                                                        Adam J. Sorkin and Ioana Ieronim

A Burning

for Ion Caraion

Oh, God

how we all scatter

like pepper berries

rolling from

a broken bag-

black irises

ejected from the white

of the eye

that can no longer stand

the burning tear

the scorching light

life`s compromises!-

Oh, God

this unblemished

e-white

like a lie in a state

of tantalizing purity!

Translation by Marcel Corniş-Pop

Dorin Tudoran Selected Poems Editura Fundaţiei Culturale Române 1999

Birthday

I entered the future as a cage

where from the last echo of its howl

I’m supposed to reconstruct the beast

destined to devour me.

The bars’ shrill music:

                               nerves from which a knife

                               has again shaved

                               yet another layer of fear.

                                                                                                translated by

                                                                        Adam J. Sorkin and Ioana Ieronim