Apolodor cel limbut şi preoţii

Ofelia Prodan


              lui Günter Grass

vocea lui Apolodor este divină
e suficient să rostească două-trei silabe
dintr-un cuvânt şi se petrec minuni

dar Apolodor este cam limbut
şi la cât de mult vorbeşte
minunile se petrec fără contenire

în ţara lui Apolodor oamenii
s-au obişnuit atât de mult cu minunile
încât nu mai deosebesc cu niciun chip
o minune de o întâmplare obişnuită

preoţii sunt exasperaţi
ţin concilii peste concilii
şi discută aprins problema
până când ajung la concluzia
că cea mai bună soluţie
este să-i reteze
de la rădăcină limba lui Apolodor

iau cu ei un cuţit de măcelar
şi în miez de noapte intră tiptil
în casa lui Apolodor care doarme neîntors

îi leagă mâinile la spate
Apolodor se trezeşte şi vrea să ţipe
dar imediat un preot îi apucă bine limba
i-o retează şi o pune într-un săculeţ

limba se zvârcoleşte se răsuceşte de durere
vrea să vorbească şi chiar vorbeşte
dinăuntrul săculeţului şi iar se petrec minuni

fără şovăială preoţii aprind un rug
scot limba din săculeţ şi o aruncă în flăcări
privind satisfăcuţi cum limba se face scrum

acum preoţii şi toată lumea aşteaptă
o minune oricât de mică
dar degeaba – Apolodor e mut ca un peşte


 

Read the English translation

Listen to the poem read in the original Romanian by the author:

Ofelia Prodan (b. 1976) has published seven books, including The Elephant in My Bed (2007), which received the Grand Ion Vinea Award as well as the debut award of the Bucharest Writers' Association, and Psychoroulette (2008), which won the George Coşbuc Special Poetry Prize at the National Poetry Festival. Her most recent book, Pathfinder (2012), received the Ion Minulescu National Prize. She was awarded first place for foreign poetry in the International Contest of Poetry and Prose held by the Napoli Cultural Classic Association in 2013. Her poetry has been translated into Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, English, French, Hungarian, and most recently, Dutch. She is a member of the Romanian Writers' Union and the Romanian PEN Center.

Florin Bican studied English at the University of Bucharest where he became a compulsive translator of Romanian literature. The resulting translations have been published in Britain, Ireland, the United States, Singapore, Germany, and Romania. His translations from English into Romanian include Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark and T. S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. When not translating, Florin Bican works on subversive children literature. His first volume of poetry, A Slob's Treasury of Verse (2007), is a collection of politically incorrect cautionary rhymes. A second volume in the same vein, The Recyclopedia of Nonsense Rhyming Tales, was published in 2013. Bican's work in progress, Torpid Tropics, is an attempt at cautionary prose and is just as politically incorrect. In 2009 he edited and contributed to The Cook-a-Book Pancyclopedia of Texts and Images, an anthology of Romanian children's literature. Between 2006 and 2012 Florin Bican was in charge of the Romanian Cultural Institute program, Translators in the Making, training foreign translators of Romanian literature.