Ion BARBU
THE DOGMATIC EGG
The Dogma: And the Spirit of God
Moved above the face of the waters
It's given to these gloomy folks
The sterile egg for daily meal,
But lively egg with seed on top
It's born in our sight as sunny seal!
As ancient world, in crystal time,
Is swimming in a thinly lime,
The new and pure egg – a gift
For wedding, a palace or a crypt.
Three sheets of silk coiled in a row,
The white sleeps in such bed of snow
So languid, and enclosed, serene,
Like loved-one tumbled in a dream.
The human seed?
From very high
From the plus pole of his own sky
Where lump of earth
Has never touched a bit.
He offers smoothly
His bursting kiss
So masculine
To the white
With its cold lips of hyaline.
***
Forgetful man, without return,
Behold the Holy Spirit how might turn
In forms cast just for you to see.
As in those times it's now – the same:
In every tiny world the dogma burns its flame.
Forgetful man, and dry,
I bring you this symbol-egg – a seed
To see the Holy Spirit in the sky
Watching live waters without reed.
And not an egg painted in red.
You obtuse men and full of greed,
I wish you now on Easter day
An egg inside with life, as gift:
Raise it against the sun and understand!
***
And mainly you should have a thrill
From that little yellow coin – a clock –
No mechanism to strike the time, and feel
How it alone ordains when egg and world
Come close to their death – a second that will devour,
Be thrilled by that yellow, necessary hour…
The breath of death is there all!
In yolk,
To gnaw the fertile white
Time will engrave in us a wheel
Exactly—it dogma will unlock.
***
And once again:
It is the Egg of sterile men the same,
Its content do not try to sip in vain.
Stop short its inner marriage meaning.
Don't put it either under any hen!
Be it in its own calm beginning.
Because with guilt is all that is already done
And holy only wedding, the uncreated one.
ISARLÎK
Imperial Danube's tear
It is chaining, to empower
Mast and Spear
Lifting all in Turkish flower”.
For a better appreciation
Of the special world of Anton Pann.
On the larger Danube, Turkish,
A tobacco faded plain,
Between Good and Evil's rain
To the sky unfolding stair,
It must open, it must flourish:
Whitish,
Righteous glare
Isarlîk!
Torn off fresh from sunny ribs!
Languid voice of greasy sips,
Reaches you with gentle steam
When a saintly muezzin
Chants in tower, high, a prayer
For the fleeting day in flare …
***
Isarlîk, my heart, my gown,
All in white, a Turkish town
On a day of plague and lime,
Nest of stone and veggie chime
– Heaven, stay, don't change in time.
Town of dreaded, humor style,
Balkan-like and half of isle…
On an aerial sea's bottom
Hot throat spins a flock of cotton
Around fourteen spindles, dearly,
Turkish towns;
and Turks, bur rarely.
Drunk she is in unique wine:
Fun of Hogea Nastratin.
***
There, with the wooden pails,
Donkeys with the fortress gales,
Hangmen, among virgin girls,
Bakers and sweet peppers' pearls,
Loafers, while Nastratin bids
Spicy dreams of garlic seeds
Kept in buckets he hounds tempers
And melts linen on white embers.
Dancing, he makes pails resound,
Odalisque in Moonlight bound.
***
Now, open largely, big gates!
I bring goods on golden plates,
On donkeys, to this special lagoon
I sell dust scraped from the moon,
Whereas varnishes now loom;
Gems are heavy, water-like,
Smart stitching and rings alike,
Peasant shoes in harem's cage,
– Isarlîk, open your stage!
I wish to be a happy bud
Among the leaves, to hear God
At times, when Kemal's boiling gore,
Across the sea down in Bosfor,
Is cutting heads on reddish bricks
Slaughtering in Asia the Greeks.
While we, the famous Turkish flower –
Static glory high in tower
From Isarlîk in outer spaces
We make faces!
A HIDDEN GAME
From time, abstracted the depth of this peaceful crest,
Gone through the mirror into redeemed azure
Engraving on the sinking flocks of rustic fest
Out of the water groups, a second game, more pure.
Latent Nadir! The poet elevates summation
Of spread out harps you lose in a reverted flight
And painfully distils a song: hidden, as only sea's cremation
Sways its Medusas under the greenish bells of light.
Translated by Liviu GEORGESCU