Angela Marinescu, Rezistențe arse

Burnt Resistors

where we live,

writers have become resistant to writing,

have made their resistance to writing their profession.

writing no longer has any power over them

and, so, they’ve become frightening wrecks, anarchists,

amoral, atheists, lewd histrionics, violent and obsessed.

instead of supporting them, writing weighs them down,

like a berg of ice,

like a tired, sick whale.

in order to finish once and for all with this state of things,

methods should be invented for exterminating writers,

quick, rudimentary, exact,

let’s say, a kafkan ultra machine

to destroy their fingers,

their hands or even the cold bite of writing,

the uterus invoked with tenderness

so they’d get to see what it means

to spend useless cold

night shifts

on an endless corridor.

Translated from the Romanian by

Stephen Watts & Claudiu Komartin