Gellu Naum, The Voyage with Stelică

The lips of the lamb were bleeding in the evening chill

when I saw the sun glowing above the sun

I was stepping gingerly on the fur by the foot of the bed

I had a buddy Stelică with an aura of beauty

all around him lizards slithered

dressed in lucent gold

this was called friendship and in it adolescence was rotting away

strands of wire glowed on our fingers and wire words whimpered

                                                                                 in our mouths

we were talking calmly as crickets

when wrapped in his own space Stelică died

I was stunned as I thought of his unavoidable voyage

toward the delta where the great river piles up human ruins

it was raining beneath our supper table

the sun was hiding all alone and Stelică’s brothers were approaching

                                                             pushed on by a surge of love

through the thick fog of the end

shrouded in untanned skins they were singing into their fists

they came to free Stelică from the zinc ship and to wash his bones

but he was whole  unrotten  gone to metal

they kissed his breastbone at dew time

but he had the pallor of death  white horses were coming

                                                      and covered him with leaves

better had they pulled a small curtain over his eyelids

sufficient his death for his mother’s tears and from his cradle

                                                  he’d been reading a book of prayer

an old man washed plums and gave them to him

                                                           and he stopped reading

he said to his mother “suckle me for the last time

since I was a child I loved to be suckled”

now we were both walking in the birth lands and ravens were circling

pitiful adolescents we were wandering about

and all around us souls were bemoaning “who are you

from your childhood who are you

if you don’t even have the words to tell us who you are

who from your childhood are you”

I taught him to say

“ladies and gentlemen let me introduce myself, Stelică”

we were two wretched adolescents he dead from childhood on

we were living in the backwoods  trees were growing on us

their branches gave us shade

we were walking together through the fog of a prenatal swamp

we were asking after a certain Bacuta but no-one knew of him

Stelică was lain out well in a church on a table he was near on floating

                       in his zinc ship edifying our aggressive brotherliness

at dawn some 2000 roosters were singing out their Psalm

each of us took his lover by the hand  we were celebrating

                                                            our golden weddings

we felt a delicate anxiety  a fecund defness

and here we were carrying our brides on our backs to the altar

they sensed a slight shudder they sensed their wombs wetting

they sensed the moon crumbling into a thousand threads

                                                                 and hiding in the grass

we were chewing dirt together with them  the amazon brides

                                                          architects of our shadows

invented by the wind

with necklaces of lead

the gaze of each of them substantiated each of us

star reconciled with silence

through signs of darkness

the ends of the nights was slowly coming

the passing wind wrote on the waves and pushed us ashore

we slithered the best we could toward the fires that had been lit

                                                                 in the courtyards

many years have passed since then  I had evidence of bitter agony

and I stayed there shattered

my hat fallen in the dust

o how long it has been since I saw the sun glowing above the sun

Translated from the Romanian by

Stephen Watts & Claudiu Komartin