Days and Nights |
By day I kept drawing up zodiac forecasts, calligrams,
mandalas, puns, sketches, leaving my body to be fed
only thereafter. The spirit would take up its meed,
without asking, its ways being still unknown.
It secretly picked up strength from who knows what,
according to the whim of my heart's sinews.
But by night things were getting different:
in the darkness of the sea, lithe beasts
with names of failures began their upward climb,
convoluted dreams struggled with phantasmic beings
vying to subvert the bastion of my eyelids –
the long-established hierarchies crumbling down.
Telescoped landscapes fell from their frames,
my melancholy kept fast blinking like a diva,
their tears as salty as the ocean brine – Woe betide
the dark – my drifting bathyscaphe stealthily looming.
Co-translated from the Romanian by the author and Heathrow O'Hare
copyright 2012
Dan
Danila |