Daniel CORBU

Optimism Refuses to Take It From the Beginning

 Sometimes you do thwart your plans
optimism refuses to take it from the beginning
somebody steals Loneliness
                             into your letter-box
which you hastily unfold like a telegram.
Sometimes you do thwart your plans
at this end of histories
when the exhaust pipes and the whip of the oil
sets fire to your indifference
when ONE HAS NO IDEA ABOUT WHO EATS WHOM
WHO DEFEATS WHOM
and what foundation is willing to give
a pair of legs
of best quality
to the war crippled man.

 

 The Word’s Hostility  

BEWILDERING REALISM OF FRIENDSHIP
You give me so many pieces of advice:
how to squeeze through the people
how to put a ridiculous smile on my lips
how to drag along my hope
what to visit
what falls to choose
what stars to breath in
and what beliefs to love most.
But you cannot hear when I speak
about the poet that carries on his back
the small real illusive empire
and for whom the word’s hostility
is a sweet burden.

 

Diorama

   Motto: „From now on I also will be like you
                   From now on even I will find no more returns!”
                                              Serghei Esenin
 
I. (The Ghost of Flowers)

You have told me, mother, that people are gentle
As an elephant
But you see today I cannot believe in the good elephants
Shaking their trunk over illusions
I cannot wait for the ghost of flowers quietly
I forget to bury in the smile of
A beautiful woman
And the white birds do not translate my melancholia any more.
So much have people changed
The machine blows the century with gravity
Tons of trotyl  wait at the mouth of the planet
All the hurricanes come from the temples
AND HORSES ARE NO LONGER HORSES YOU KNOW
THOSE ANIMALS
 WITH GENTLE LARGE EYES
ABOUT WHICH THEY STILL SPEAK IN THE HISTORY TEXTBOOK
So much have people changed, mother,
Even the angels receive letters at poste restante.

II. (Mother  with  transparent  hands)

Mother, your children have sold their heart to the cities
they have forgotten the ways to the village
and you are still hopeful, mother with transparent hands
Every evening you wash our faces with the water of your memory
your look fixed on the line of the hill.

Now I know I won’t come back in the evenings
I find myself estranged
like a violet-blue star poetry hangs at my buttonhole
I travel by tram but it takes me nowhere
I admire the plastic roses in the shop windows
now and then I can hear your strokes
in my hair like bitter pitch dark.
Now and then there rises in me
the mist of our forests
mother with transparent hands I am sad as before
and I go on writing poems
and I go on writing poems.

 

                 Almost A Man
                                  to my friend Tiberiu Daioni

So do I live my life
among the four walls between the two covers
between the two streets
that have never met before
between the two mornings that flutter
                                        their handkerchiefs
between my self-pride in changing the world
with a simple beat of language
and a prudent dusk
between dream and faith between
love and hatred
I am almost a man.
 Traduceri de Olimpia IACOB