Magda Cârneci

Millions of seas

Magda Cârneci

It’s there, an ocean of darkness

          behind your bare, lithe back

which you scarcely cover

          the door broken outward towards

                                                                  the intelligible

your body a raw layer of skin

          stretched between two precipices

thinnest of blades despairing echo in nothing

          its immeasurable liberty

we are scarcely gotten up from beastliness

          as from a bloodstained bed

only suffering pain terror can yet

          set the darkness aflame

it’s there, an ocean of light

          behind your bare, lithe back

which you scarcely cover

          the door broken inward towards

                                                                  the unfathomable

it’s there, a silent sea in every cell of the body

          millions of seas

          awaiting

          the sign of the apocalypse

                                                                                    translated by

                                                                                    Adam J. Sorkin with the poet

Into the body

I would like to inhale the entire world into the body:

      acid sunsets, electric cities and snow,

          the dead in the field, soaring dawns and the clatter and honk

      of the streets in the morning, relentless migrations and the frantic

          proliferation of cosmic and microbial realms.

That the entire world would swarm into me

      through my skin, my nails, my blood

          to saturate me         overwhelm, destroy, dissolve me.

That I would abide like a pebble under its enormous,

      heavy cascade, annihilated and happy:

          that I would be a mere point

                                                                    over which a mighty ocean looms         suspended.

And by lifting my gaze         that I would see         its translucent bottom

swirling with rapid motion         squirming and phosphorescence:

      darkness, lustrous schools of fish, the colors of the abyss.

And suddenly the ocean would burst, like a distended plastic bag

      of salt water, a gigantic placenta,

it would wash over me,         wave upon wave,

      flood upon flood,

but this tide wouldn’t kill me:        instead,         enveloping me in an instant,

      it would scour my blood         course through my veins and arteries

like an enormous roar         with a blinding brilliance like lightning

                                                                                   threading through a needle’s sharp point.

Somebody or something         obscure         gelatinous         boundless,

wants to descend below         into the darkness         through my skin and nails,

      to assume a body         and be born,

          not to disintegrate me         not at all to die.

Nothing less than the entirety of the world         would fulfill me.

      That I would absorb it into the body. That I would be world.

This is the most powerful drug,          the ultimate

      which would satisfy me         and save me.

                                                                                                                      But not even this.

                                                                                    translated by

                                                                                    Adam J. Sorkin with the poet