Traduceri

Câteva poeme traduse de curând în engleză de Adam J. Sorkin:


Irina

I remember a brick house
and a long alley descending toward a courtyard in shadow
where in August the unmown grass stood high,
up to my knees. I can see Irina’s body stretched out there,
among the thistles, the small insects, the boxwoods—and the world
slowing to the rhythm of the rise and fall

of her chest, until full abandonment of the self. An ecstatic smile.
I keep in my mind her thin ankle (a little reddened where
the strap of her sandal rubbed
and her white thigh, all but singing, stirred
by a gust of wind out of nowhere.
Nearly two years have gone by.

It’s summer again, an overwhelming season
that dictates even my least movement.
In the meantime her body has filled out,
she now wears her hair longer
(they tell me) and the fury, oh well, my fury has diminished,
distilled by so many things, so many words.

I’m a lonely, polite man
imagining more and more often
a brick house
and a long alley
descending toward a cold place in shadow, to which
there’s no return.


Romanian Oddity

I’ve seen the place where people work even in their sleep
there I fell in love with a yellow woman
to whom I was an oddity a creature from another world:
a polyglot gypsy whose guttural voice resounded
through the darkness of a ghost town
inhabited by 10 million robots.

when I gave up begging for understanding and warmth,
I freed myself from the earth as in a Buddhist legend
and my body floated for a while
in an abyss crammed with neon lights and optic cables—

then in an instant everything burned
charring to cinders before my eyes
clouded by madness and desire,
the way, in an old silent film,
dummies imitated people’s gestures and habits.


Refuge
for Kristofer Flensmarck

When the moon knocks against the shelter’s walls at night
and books are helpless family elders
who have long failed to respond to any stimulus,
as if I were a child saved by animals
language seems unbearable to me.
a dry pond deep in the forest.

(everywhere around me, running
nonstop, machines I can’t describe
without dying of shame and fright.)

would that I were an illiterate,
a savage who rubs his belly
and hums syncopated songs among petrified trees.

the spark has faded away, but the first words
still echo in the den
where the fox watches over her cub, perplexed,
then gently licks his forehead
hoping it’s been just a misunderstanding.

translated by Adam J. Sorkin
with the author


& un link către un blog unde am avut surpriza să-mi găsesc mai multe poeme traduse în limba maghiară (pentru prima oară), ceea ce mi se pare grozav, cu atât mai mult cu cât nici nu ştiu cine a făcut-o: http://urszu2.blogspot.com