THE VIOLIN
The light came and the young man
recognized himself
~ D. Solomos

Their hands reversed your dress that excited
their fantasy. In your royal gown they defiled you,
the glorified, and they condemned you, the master.
~ V. Hugo
In each child, in each dawn, the holy imagination
is reborn
~Lenau

Day and night my mind
became such a sea wave.
Men of different races
call me a gypsy; the gypsies
call me of a different race
the workers call me lazy
the golden-hearted cry for me
the revellers don’t want me
the healthy called me invalid
the invalid called me clown
dreamers looked at me with
strange eyes as if I started
an improper, foreign dream
as I pass the ghosts despise
my body and like a curse…

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Argo
Ship weaved
on the abyss of our hands
ship lost
in the angelic sound of two hasty arms.
The North wind engaged
when we emigrated to the shores of the universe
holding in our arms the Epitaphios and
the Athesterean.*
Who with his finger showed us
the royal manner of the horizon?

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Target
Ahmed rolls up the shutters of his shop
enters darkness
his flashlight lighted
gazes around the meagre supplies
covered by dust
needs to clean up before he opens
for the neighbourhood customers
places the flashlight on a shelf
grabs a piece of cloth from the counter
suddenly, the familiar hellish sound
pierces his ears: guided smart bomb
blows two stores next to his
ground recedes, firms up, trembles
like Ahmed’s legs, hell on earth
recommenced, a defence contractor’s
smart weapon has found its target

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Encounter
The light has a yellow shade on the facades of the houses.
The shadow of the leafless trees on the walls and in the street
resemble the shadow of foreign soldiers with the machine guns.
The shadows have changed
the voices have changed — they’ve become hesitant, like
someone who is trying to find a street number, he makes two
steps, looks at the window, where is the doorbell? What
sound would the doorbell make in the hallway with
the unfamiliar stairs?
When you say tomorrow is as if you want to console someone.
You don’t talk. The rooms feel sleepy in the silence.
The fingertips of silence remain on the shelves, the chairs,
the railings of the bed, like a sick woman who gets up
in the night to get a glass of water. She can’t stand. She leans
on the furniture, she trips on her nighty and falls again
on her bed before she finds the water pitcher.
We were thirsty.
Loneliness never had a glass of water.
Her trembling fingertips still stay on the dusty surfaces.
Back then we had time. We watered the rose-garden.
We chit-chatted.
It isn’t the same anymore. Now you count words and colors.
You can’t establish their weight.
Alice died. She will never be in our company anymore,
as during those afternoons when we dreamed of things.
Her summer shoes
will remain under her bed like two white dead birds and
her little watch, stopped, on the empty table, like a star
you see through the window shutters of the desolate
house.

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THE TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
The complexity of the translation act has often been talked about. Making
a text cross over the confines of a language and culture within the
borderlines of another language and culture is a deed of pride as the
translator re-creates the original text and a deed of humility and obedience
because translation is always a Luciferic fall. It is a subordinate(d)
text that has to admit the limits imposed upon itself by the original.
Translation is joy and pain.
Rodica Marian’s poetry is the work of an intellectual influenced by
her culture, by her knowledge as a linguist, semiotician, specialist in poetics.
Rodica Marian’s poetical exercise obviously belongs to a creator
aware of the linguistic mechanisms contributing to the creation of the
poetic. The unwareness of her talent goes hand in hand with the scholar’s
consciousness that she can no longer look at the world, at the artistic
act innocently. Rodica Marian’s poetry is laden with cultural allusions.
The well driven religious trend conceals profound experiences, regrets,
difficult questions about the individual’s destiny. Rodica Marian is a poetess
who has committed the sin of knowledge and she cannot return
to the pure, naive experience of living without cultural references. Numerous
voyages have offered her the occasion to re-read the world using
an intertextual key. Rodica Marian writes about and among her inner
and outer travels with the joy that only an authentic scholar carrying the
burden of her readings everywhere can have.
The selection of the poems from this volume points to the taste and
preferences of the translator who was happy to give Rodica Marian a
voice in the language of William Shakespeare and Sylvia Plath. The bitter
joys of this effort, which can always be improved, were special.
MIHAELA MUDURE

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…risky to remember/to remember is not risky
for memories we do not forgive
so there is nothing to forget
in lieu of our fathers we remember
in the end there is a beginning
that is why spring flowers bloom
everything in the end bursts
hope
snotty phantoms crawl
in the petty silence
in the autumnal rose’s blood
fish with no scales
six concrete layouts draw near from six directions
the plan of possibilities narrows more and more
long passed minutes climb up to the top
breath becomes heavier
the dull needle still gathers pieces of sound and song
“you rest
in peaceful dreams
in the dark lit pearl may you burn”
what hurts most is that the record
runs down and we do not realizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Sunday Afternoon

Only a sour body smell was left
on the unwashed bed-sheets.
The lost limbs crawl at the quarry.
Aquatic plants spread in the empty space.
Only the eyes insist: sweat, shaven heads,
thermometers and spitting bowls.
And next to this the nurse, cursing, waited
to give his report, knowing that
death or recuperation were equally unwanted
to the camp commander.
Yelling was heard from down the soccer field.

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