Nora Iuga

A Snapshot of the Mature Mammal

death begins with the precision of clock dials

with the chessboard

with the mania for incompetence

while outside at the periphery

storks on stilts

their red beaks

like a monastery aflame

sparks leap to my retina

like ripe chestnuts

beyond the curtains beyond the snow

and I hand in hand with myself

a snapshot of the mature mammal

hanging from the hook of suicide

I provoke my own laughter I provoke the hemorrhage

of a mountain’s bulk blocking the road

a mild daytime trance

death is summoned by a star

falling within me

death is the equestrian statue

of the triumphal self

there are gradients there are ciphers

my number is approaching your number

the single oar with which I can

still dislodge this brain

beyond the alps beyond the snow

inside a green walnut

                                                                        translated by

                                                                        Adam J. Sorkin and Irma Giannetti

Simply Because It Was Dark

who set the old fox

free

while sublunary white hens scratched the earth

who carelessly left

the iron to crumble into rust

or out of laziness or shame

no longer bent to pick up

a dropped coin

I am a palm tree lost

on the stream bank

among the entrails of sacrificed animals

I am a black and white horse

who loves and whinnies tears

deep night double night

for both of my eyes

beauty tore loose from me

like a wheel

and stays by the side of the highway

a miserable girl

forced to hitchhike

it’s as if I were locked in a loaf of black bread

forgotten among the animals

still nobody takes her stockings off

still nobody lays eggs

in a franciscan chapel

I pace heavily from right to left

in the station

I warm my hands

my senses take leave of me one by one

like spectators who walk out in the middle of the play

somebody is going to shake out my bed sheets

and my sleep will overrun the city

with withered leaves

a bizarre red-tinged death

in which the sporadic mildness

of a street lamp yet glimmers

                                                                        translated by

                                                                        Adam J. Sorkin and Ioana Ieronim

Night Typist

so here at last is a native country

as illegible as the signature of an illiterate

a dubious flag flutters

among the explosions of simulators

and the glad-hearted zeal of repressive armies

I remain beside the catafalque of the millennium

the ultimate success was the breeding of falsehood with vulgarity

these two monkeys of the dead

and everything fell right into place

nothing has changed

except for the fingerprints

on the plundered throne

                                                                        translated by

                                                                        Adam J. Sorkin and Ioana Ieronim

The Ferns at Night

he told me that he used to love

a woman with legs like a dog’s

I have curled up on his chest

and all night long I have heard him howl

they were passing through the air with yellow miner’s lamps

they had knives and forks of alpaca

they had gone hunting

then afterward even his voice arrived

in the flesh and bone

and I could see how he stole my face

out of it he was making dough

a bit of batter

good for putting children to bed

all at once I found that my soul had been shrunk

that beauty had departed from my mind

that I am an eternity without qualities

toys grow on these staircases

if you were to unstitch your eyes from the sleeves

if you were to unstitch the sleeves from your body

you could see airplanes

but he continues to howl

until I feel the ferns

the night drawing me to itself

like a magnet

                                                                        translated by

                                                                        Adam J. Sorkin and Ioana Ieronim