Ştii, oamenii sînt Moscove ruinate de votcă şi de nepăsare
vîndute pe sub mînă,
mesteceni găuriţi în care a suflat fochistul negru,
siberianul cu lopata crescută din mădularul puterii sale,
cenuşă de paradis şi zodie de ţări mici cărate în inimă
de nemuritoarele benzi transportoare ale capitalului roşu.
Azi cînd veneam spre casă golit de viaţă am auzit sîngele
cum striga la mine –
bătrîne, să fie atît de greu să ţii omul pe picioare?
Sînge înalt de doi metri şi tot mai vrea să crească.
Cred că vorbesc de unul singur cu un clopoţel
de catîr orb în tîmpla dreaptă,
norii deasupra mea îmi spun ceva ce nu înţeleg
(poeţii slabi sînt lacomi?),
parcă mi-ar cere să mă opresc atunci
cînd fac dragoste cu o femeie care nu e în faţa mea.
Aşteapt-o să vină. Am deschis o uşă – nu era nimeni.
Stau în cameră pe podea şi văd un bivol mare
tolănit printre cărţile mele curate.
Balega lui verde va face şi anul ăsta oameni fericiţi
la Bursă. Fochistul negru ne va strînge într-o zi pe toţi
cu lopata lui tare.
Nu am fost vreodată în Siberia dar pot să jur că am
pe cineva acolo.
Fochistul negru
Nicolae Coande
Listen to the poem read in the original Romanian by the author:
Nicolae Coande (born 1962 in Osica de Sus, Romania) has published eight collections of poetry in Romanian: On the Edge (1995); Fincler (1997); The Dead-End Road Named Homer (2002); Folfa (2003); Wind, Tobacco & Alcohol (2008); The Woman that I Write About (2010); VorbaIago (2012); and Persona (2013). He has also published four collections of essays, the most recent of which is Romanian Intellectuals and the King's Court (2011). He has received several awards for his poetry from the Writers' Union of Romania. His work has been included in the anthologies Gefährliche Serpentinen – Rumänische Lyrik der Gegenwart (Druckhaus Verlag, Berlin, 1998), edited by Dieter Schlesak; Of Gentle Wolves (Calypso Editions, New York, 2011), translated and edited by Martin Woodside; and The Vanishing Point that Whistles (Talisman Press, USA, 2011), edited by Paul-Doru Mugur, Adam Sorkin, and Claudia Serea.
Adam J. Sorkin has published more than fifty books of translation. His work has won the 2005 Poetry Society Prize for European Poetry Translation as well as the International Quarterly Crossing Boundaries Award, the Kenneth Rexroth Memorial Translation Prize, the Ioan Flora Prize for Poetry Translation, and the Poesis Translation Prize, among others. His most recent publications include A Sharp Double-Edged Luxury Object by Rodica Draghincescu (Červená Barva, 2014), translated with Antuza Genescu; Gold and Ivy/Aur și iederă by George Vulturescu (Eikon, 2014), translated with Olimpia Iacob; The Starry Womb by Mihail Gălățanu (Diálogos, 2014), translated with Petru Iamandi and the author; and The Book of Anger by Marta Petreu (Diálogos, 2014), translated with Christina Zarifopol-Illias and Liviu Bleoca. His translation of Floarea Țuțuianu’s Syllables of Flesh is forthcoming from Plamen Press.
Claudia Serea is a poet and translator whose work has appeared in Field, New Letters, 5 a.m., Meridian, Gravel, Prairie Schooner, and many other journals. An eight-time Pushcart Prize and four-time Best of the Net nominee, she is the author of Angels & Beasts (Phoenicia Publishing, 2012), A Dirt Road Hangs From the Sky (8th House Publishing, 2013), To Part Is to Die a Little (Cervena Barva Press, 2015), and Nothing Important Happened Today (Broadstone Books, 2016). Serea co-edited and co-translated The Vanishing Point That Whistles: an Anthology of Contemporary Romanian Poetry (Talisman House Publishing, 2011) for which she received a grant from the Romanian Cultural Institute. Serea also translated Adina Dabija’s award-winning Beautybeast (Northshore Press, 2012) from the Romanian. Serea is a founding editor of National Translation Month and she co-hosts The Williams Poetry Readings in Rutherford, NJ. Her latest project is Twoxism, a poetry-photography collaboration blog.
