poezie carolina ilica
TRANSCRIPT
Vow
I do not dare talk to you about eternity
When everything that I owe is so ephemeral
Especially the body
my mostly caressed body
Dressed up in the most beautiful
tight and warm dress
of its white skin.
But
For as long as I love you
For as long as I hold you
on the pedestal of my heart
I will adore you:
You will be the sphinx of my lucidity
And the black Minotaur
of my
violet
subconscious.
You will be the king of my desires
always submitted
to your desires
And the god of my ever lasting
young soul
or rather a child.
And like a god I will lead you
beyond time.
But only if you wake up –
if you wake up some time –
English version by
Muguraş Maria Petrescu
Afforestation
Let me imagine that you would suffer from a sudden amnesia
Just like the characters of so many Latin American telenovelas.
That you have already moved to such a country
Living in its capital city
situated
In an even lifeless
haunted by winds and drought-stricken
plain.
A city capital
With no parks and no forests around.
Don’t remember anything from before
Just let another fate choose you
And live your life
by another
unknown woman.
Let me miss you.
But out of all these reasons
As well as from other
subjective/objective reasons
Why should I write you:
“I miss you”?!
And then I’ll draw a tree for you
And then another one
with each every letter
And little by little
I’ll afforest the view
In front of your window
Around your house
And even further and further
Then I’ll draw mountains
and hills
and valleys
And I’ll afforest them all:
With Christmas fir trees.
With small tiny hedge thorns
invaded by the white flowers’
aphides
and guarded by
thorns.
With beech trees that rustle and long-lived oak trees
With effeminate
birch trees.
With very bitter alder trees
and solitary maple trees.
With dreaming linden trees
Like poets.
With silky willows with many a twig
floating downstream.
With very straight poplars
candles that climb up to the sky
with heart-shaped leaves
in fibrillation…
And in the forests there start to swarm
Phreatic streams
And great and free
wild beasts
multiplying themselves
magically
As in “One Hundred Years of Solitude”.
On the branches
there are no fruit
but birds
Vividly colored;
Let them chirp
And I hope that you’ll understand
What they say to one another.
And in the glades
in spring
shivering softly
There’ll appear:
frail little corn flowers
watered
with white-bluish snowdrops
shining among them
like snow in the moon
hollowwort hesitating like ephebes
newly-born fresh sweet violet flowers
and especially spring crocus
all dressed up
in dark blue-violet
and in autumn
in tinted faded restrained violet.
And thus in time
I’ll change
The forms of relief of your country
The flora and the fauna
And the climate then
And with them even those people from there
Especially you.
Until in the end you will grasp
The meaning and pressure of the word DOR.
And only by then will you begin to come back
And through you our words
Will begin to flow down
more vivid than blood
And only by then will you be able to respond:
That there are so many contemporaries - billions! –
who will never be able to meet
As if they lived in ages and in different worlds
It really seems too much that we too
however have met
And beyond everything
to be with you
to be with me.
And if you ever choose to meet your death
Tell it to me and I’ll be there
So that
the two of us
die together!
English version by
Muguraş Maria Petrescu
DOR = longing, yearning, nostalgia, missing. Upon Carolina Ilica’s request we kept in the poem the Romanian version of this word. The word DOR cannot be translated as such, that is why here-above we give variants. It derives from the linguistic root of the word DORINŢĂ = desire expressing a burning feeling of longing for a remote person or for an unattainable thing.
Sacrality
A heaven just like in the beginning, vegetal.
Orchards with flowers worked out by bees:
When the first comes, the other one just leaves.
Acknowledged landscapes: valley-hills,
On which the dew will hang like in a cloud.
In honeycomb like in hexagonal goblet
From wax honey increases, doesn’t melt
As it will do to me, when I do miss my folks.
Herodutus writes me from ancient times,
That Southern border trespassed by nobody
Was fully guarded then, only by bee;
Living the same now, matriarchally,
And in the valley-hill, undulatory sky
Transposed by our music hearing
Into this DOINA displaying its full sounding
In a museum – a native space sacrality.
English version by
Muguraş Maria Petrescu
DOINA = a specific Romanian folkloric elegy written by unknown authors, “DOINA expresses in a direct manner very diversified feelings: longing, sadness, love, hate against oppressors, alienation, grief, etc.” (Source: Google, Wikipedia). Upon Carolina Ilica’s request we kept in the poem the Romanian version of this word.
A Small Prayer
Oh, Lord, take care of my mom,
Because by now she is advanced in age
While everything’s reduced and taken though,
While what is easy seems to be so slow
Oh, Lord, take care of my mom!
Oh, Lord, take care of my daughter,
Because she is all longsome and alone.
While being young in spirit and confident
Assuming the world’s burden of small weight.
Oh, Lord, take care of my daughter!
And in between them too, take care of myself
And do take care of them, my Lord!
Because by now we’re just a little heap:
A root, a body and a tiny twig.
Forgive us, Lord, the others won’t forgive!
Nevertheless, who’s richer among us:
Is it my mom, with her own daughter and granddaughter?
Is it my daughter, with her own mom and her grandmom?
Or is it me who has a mom and has a daughter,
Being a daughter and a mom at the same time?!
English version by
Muguraş Maria Petrescu
Both Slowly and Hastily (a double poem)
a) The Mouth which Is Kissed in a Laughter
Oh, the mouth
which is kissed
in a laughter,
A flower
of a reddish
smell
While this life
of ours is,
as if
Death
were too slow!
English version by
Muguraş Maria Petrescu
b)Hastily
I offer you the trace of my head on a pillow.
The shape of my forehead thinking deeply of you.
Hastily coming
Hastily going
I leave you, you leave me:
You who are full of my absence
Me imbued with poetry
As a riverside meadow:
By the rain caressing it from up to down
all over in a feminine way
And by the river which penetrates it with virility.
Hastily coming
Hastily going
Hastily I might leave this world too.
No matter how late by then I shall be
I shall think just like now
And just like when I was 23:
O,
Dear life,
I liked all which existed in you
But more than that to love
And to sing!
English version by
Muguraş Maria Petrescu
A Precious Autumn
A precious autumn
with red copper and gold.
The sky which is studded with stars
Is the hanging garden of Semiramis .
Is the juvenile age bygone?
The juvenile age
Which can do everything!
Your life grew dearer some times more.
English version by
Muguraş Maria Petrescu
Aphrodite
There she is approaching in a flown-sparrow pageant!
It’s the mid of the day which will bring her right here.
On her shoulders her hair in ringlets rise slightly,
These are ringlets to make her feel free.
There it is the pageant is stopping sideways
In the wavy and flying green grass like a mane!
Flocks of birds which by now are dead weary
Unharnessed hardly will be.
There she is bare-footed, forgetting her sandals!
Like a pillow, curled mint will lay down at her feet
It’s the long and the bare crossed-arms,
Holding her wrapped in white sheet.
There she is stepping on the path decorated by grass
With butterflies and flowers, with pollen and bees!
So slowly and thorough as if
Out she is going and not coming back.
There it is the grit jumping out in the sunshine
Changing out in a slim violin,
Its long bow interweaves water stream
Springing out from the mountain.
There she is stopping seduced by the river
Which is singing and running away from itself!
Like a rain her cloth falls down on her hips
And like the moon she is naked herself!
There it is the river flanked in between the two shores,
Cannot jump as it wants to envelope her body!
Yet she jumps down from a hill with tall oaks,
Like an acorn which down falls.
That’s all that one sees from the height of the sky
From where great Zeus down is looking at her.
But she doesn’t take care that water
Stays on her breasts like a fry.
There she is now closely watched
By this man young of age… whom they call Praxiteles
Yearning for thrills and thirsty of nice
And a robber of models.
There he is waiting that she gets out from the waves
She who was born from the foam of the seas!
In exchange he will stand stone-still, while his eyes
Will run to her only one single kiss to steal.
For a while, after that Goddess
Sees her own statue and blushes to the roots of her hair.
Cause naked she was caught by his chisels
And is seen by all there.
English version by
Muguraş Maria Petrescu
Aphrodite
La voilà qu’elle s’approche dans son char que les piafs tirent !
C’est le cœur du midi qui l’amène ici.
Sur ses épaules, ses cheveux en boucles lui sautent,
C’est des boucles à épanouir.
Le voilà, c’est le char qui s’arrête à travers
Dans les herbes enflées par le vol comme une crinière !
Compagnie des oiseaux à présent fatigués,
À peine vont se dételer.
La voilà les pieds nus, oubliant ses sandales !
C’est la menthe des champs qui s’étale sous ses pieds,
C’est les bras propres et nus et croisés,
Qui la prennent.
La voilà qu’elle s’engage sur la voie d’une herbe garnie
Avec des papillons et des fleurs, du pollen et abeilles !
Si légère et soigneuse comme si
Elle ne rebrousse chemin, pour s’en aller.
Et voilà que la grève des cailloux qu’au soleil vont jaillir,
Dans un corps d’un violon vont changer !
Tout au long l’archet est fait
Des montagnes à ruisseler.
Et voilà qu’elle s’arrête séduite sur la rive
Qui chante et s’enfuit de soi-même à jamais !
Comme la pluie, son vêtement sur ses hanches lui coule
Car, tout comme la lune, nue elle est !
Et voilà que cette rivière flanquée par des rives,
Ne pourra à jamais sauter pour la prendre !
En échange elle saute du haut de la colline des rouvres
En tombant comme un gland.
C’est tout qu’on se voit de l’hauteur du ciel
De l’endroit où le Zeus tout puissant la regarde.
Pour l’instant elle ne voit que c’est l’eau qu’elle retient
Sur sa poitrine, comme un poisson.
Et voilà que maintenant il l’a guette du côté
Le jeune homme… Il s’appelle Praxitèle.
Assoiffé de désirs et du beau
Et voleur des modèles.
Et voilà qu’il attend qu’elle en sorte des ondes
Elle qui est née de l’écume de mer !
Il la voit et change dans une statue de sel ; de ses yeux
Un baiser il lui vole.
Et voilà que maintenant, après temps, la Déesse vît sa propre statue,
Souhaitant qu’elle en fût à cent pieds sous la terre
Car toute nue on la rend éternelle par ses gouges
El la voit qui n’importe.
Version française par
Muguraş Maria PETRESCU