Today i felt sick on the 21 streetcar.
a dizziness came over me and the upset held me there
on my feet. halfway down the 21 streetcar. where life
is split in two. there i was leaning on the side pole
the upset got me.
that’s how i remember it, halfway down the streetcar
where they keep the small seesaws. the big seesaws are
closer to the driver. you don’t have to be a certain age
for the seesaws. you can even be a child if you want
for the seesaws. those past the middle of the streetcar
receive a free seesaw to swing on.
as i was counting the stops to the Obor market. something
bad came over me and i got weak in the knees. and saw black
spots. a bit bad or a lot bad i’m not sure because i’m not all dead yet.
just that my knees got weak and a voice i knew shouted Emil Emil.
lay him down. something’s wrong with him. and let him breathe
on his own. the passengers shouted. very nice the passengers on the
21 streetcar. one offered me his seat. another opened the window.
very nice passengers ’course because i was one of their own.
just that my forehead and hands were sweaty and cold.
just that the bad was slowly shrinking and the black spots
i saw on the 21 streetcar were leaving me.
i don’t even remember the king’s prayer.
just the female voice i waited for all my life at
Perla station to take the 21 streetcar which was really
the 46 streetcar. i remember. to take us.
to take us to the Obor market for the Easter lamb.
Starting today i’ll try to fall asleep, not die.
i fit very well in my two-person bed. i say my bed though
the bed isn’t mine. i can curl up in my bed i can unravel
myself. my bed’s a parallelepiped for several people. for me
form no longer matters it’s important to have room in it. usually
in the evening after the must-have shower,
i’m horrified i could die
willy-nilly like that unwashed like that.
and those who wash the dead will come to see me naked and say
no one’s washed this guy since the beginning of time.
we have to wash him on the inside too. i’m
horrified a stranger would see me naked. and as i lie
along and across the bed i enjoy practicing dying with my hands
crossed over my chest. i put my hands on my chest and
hold my breath. something in me wants to take my place.
something in me doesn’t want to get out of me. It’s a good thing
i’m not the one who makes the law or i’d have been
dead long ago.
and as i practice death i think it’s great i went through the
minute of death on the 21 streetcar which was really
the 46 streetcar. so that i can practice falling asleep. i no
longer want to die i want to fall asleep.
i fasted, gave alms to the poor, had sex
less than a drop in the ocean, helped an old woman cross
the street. i think that’s enough
to be able to sleep with the thought that i deserve to fall asleep not
to die. in my bed of an unknown shape.
The cleaning lady is green
despite her blue eyes
we love her beauty to death. we sniff
unwashed since the beginning of the world
lusting to know. and from too much knowledge
we forgot that the intersection between giving and
receiving the spring mist an empty sack
gurgling not even French perfume
makes it go away. we’re more organic
exophthalmic eyes. muddy balloons.
if we don’t want
she chooses from what we have. what’s better more syrupy
we keep searching our memories perhaps there’s
a leftover slice of bread a good deed by mistake,
a sprig of onion wide as a rope. we search through
everything we have at least a sprinkle of
kind words. an offering
she wants us to stop for a moment
to change our meaning. to make us at least
leaves the kitchens of growing upward. what she puts us through what she doesn’t
put us through. all that’s left is a baby the size of a baguette.
who hopes and hopes.
we’ve started thinning out
and one who passed through the no. 9 mental hospital
he says he’s a national security agent
we that he’s a security guard. he isn’t sick
he’s always right.
a metal cup or maybe
a jar that expands threateningly
we don’t even curse him behind his back. not because of fear we think
more positively when he’s around. it took us too long to understand
that No, the nervous tic, with a question mark at the end of a sentence, is actually Yes.
emotions jumped out of him like strings.
he told us he wouldn’t have left that manelist diva.
should’ve seen how he compared her to the woman he
never had. he about smashed his phone.
it wasn’t our fault he was the only
man without a woman.
That guy says your colleague has cigarettes
they cut our bellies and we start clucking.
he puts our 100-lei bills into piles. if i’m like
other poets i should have room. i stand up
and run away with the ATM. a few hens get after us.
my colleague says he’s been smoking the same cigarette for three days. he takes a drag
and puts a cap on it for later. we butter him up and promise him
the moon and the stars if he’d just let us have a drag.
we feel like kissing him long and hard on his snout
to take the cigarette smoke off the roof of his mouth.
and we’re so sorry that the cigarette must burn
to smoulder so that we’ve something to drag on.
our colleague secretly smokes in his palms.
because we think that such a crappy life
only in prison, not even in death.
Four Poems
Emil-Iulian Sude
translated from the Romanian by Diana Manole
Listen to the original read by the poet:
After I had translated into English two docudramas about the rights of Roma women in Romania for the anthologies Roma Heroes (Independent Theater Hungary, 2019 and 2021), Emil-Iulian Sude contacted me on Facebook and sent me the link to one of his magazine publications. It proved to be a mysterious coincidence: he didn’t know about my work as a translator, but only as a poet, and I learned much later that he was one of the first award-winning poets of Roma ethnicity in Romania. I’m now translating a book-length anthology of his poems, which I very much admire. Sude’s work is defined by an organic mixture of existential reflection, search for identity, human rights concerns, and self-irony. Drawing on his life experience as an impoverished night security guard at a public school in Bucharest and a Romani man facing ethnic discrimination, as well as on his overflowing imagination, he invents an aesthetic that I can identify as magic naturalism. Sordid details, such as the fear of being mocked by “those who wash the dead” for not taking a shower before dying, are combined with surrealist images, like children’s seesaws on a streetcar. The differences between Romanian and English, especially the lack of declension of nouns and adjectives in English, make translating poetry quite difficult in general. Sude’s lack of punctuation and capitalization, surrealist images, and made-up words, inspired by Romani expressions, add to the usual challenges. Moreover, he enjoys using Romanian idioms which have multiple meanings in context. In “Today i felt sick on the 21 streetcar,” for example, “mă / luase un rău” could mean that the speaker felt suddenly sick or that an evil force had overpowered him. I have done my best to suggest both meanings with “the upset got me.” In “Starting today i’ll try to fall asleep, not die,” an apparently banal description of an agitated night’s sleep reveals that the speaker is also breaking himself apart, perhaps to better understand himself: “în patul meu mă pot ghemui / mă pot răscoli.” Whereas in Romanian we can “răscoli patul,” i.e. “twist and turn, pulling the bedding sheets under us,” the same verb, “a răscoli,” could also indicate high emotional distress, as if something rummaged through oneself. My translation choice, “i can curl up in my bed i can unravel / myself,” aims to suggest the emotional state, while also preserving the reference to fabrics. Finding the best solutions for Sude’s original images and diction is a fascinating task.
Emil-Iulian Sude is one of the first award-winning poets of Roma ethnicity in Romania. He currently works as a night security guard at a public school while being a third-year student at the University of Bucharest, pursuing a major in Romani and a minor in Romanian. His poetry has earned him eighteen awards, such as first place in the “Bronislawa Wajs” International Contest of Literary Creation and Translation, celebrating the centenary of the Roma (1919–2019), and fourth place in the 2018 manuscript competition organized by the Centrul Național de Cultură a Romilor–Romano Kher (National Center for Roma Culture–Romano Kher) in collaboration with the Romanian government. He was also awarded a Diploma of Excellence at the 2018 Roma Excellence Gala for his “remarkable contribution to the development and promotion of Roma culture and identity.” Sude has published three books, ,,Scărarul” (The Ladder Maker, Grinta, 2014), ,,Chiar Nu” (Really No, Eurostampa, 2016), and ,,Povești” (Stories, Centrul Național de Cultură a Romilor, 2018). These are his first translations into English.
Diana Manole is a Romanian-born Canadian scholar, writer, and literary translator. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto and has been teaching at Canadian universities since 2006. In her home country, she published nine collections of poetry, short fiction, and plays, and earned fourteen literary awards, including one from the Romanian Writers’ Union. She has also translated or co-translated seven poetry collections into or from English and was one of the recipients of the second prize in the 2018 John Dryden Translation Competition. Diana’s independent translations into English of two Romani feminist dramas from Romania were included in the anthologies Roma Heroes (Independent Theater Hungary, 2019 and 2021). Her seventh poetry book, Praying to a Landed-Immigrant God, is forthcoming from Grey Borders Books.
