War
The quiet of one thought
Equivalent to our lives
Collapsed, pulverized,
Lost among the troubled skies of our times.
The answer to the old cries,
From the white cities,
it no longer brings the beautiful
quiet from afar.
Sirens shred new thoughts.
Oh, how short the quiet was!
The jungle boils again beneath the sun;
arrows of fire rain down.
Ghosts pass by and greet us,
The smile of death on their faces,
They take what little quiet we have left,
and some of us too, with them.
[Maybe someday you’d like]
Maybe someday you’d like
to regain your balance
by reading serious verses
and, dispensing a tight smile,
say there’s no one left to stop you . . .
And if there weren’t
someone wiser,
there’d be no jealousy or hate,
and if there weren’t
someone better, kinder,
people’s norms wouldn’t be
violated
and everyone would be gone.
The soil is best scattered
around neatly arranged bones.
If it weren’t for those who call
to us from afar,
igniting our blood
there would be the great silence,
from which nothing ever emerges.
Two Poems
Leonard Tuchilatu
translated from the Romanian by Irina Hrinoschi
Listen to "[Maybe someday you’d like]" read in the original Romanian by the translator:
Leonard Tuchilatu’s poetry focuses on metaphysical questions of life and death, war, and his identity as a Romanian-speaking Moldovan in the context of the Soviet Union’s policies of cultural repression in its republics. Tuchilatu’s identity is often wrapped in allegorical language that revolves around the landscapes and nature of his homeland. His style is sparse and discreetly ironic. For a translator, his use of metaphors demands creativity and decisiveness. This makes translating his poems challenging and particularly rewarding.
Leonard Tuchilatu (10 November 1951–4 November 1975) was a poet from Moldova, a former Soviet republic. He died of an incurable illness at twenty-four, after being subjected to disciplinary punishments during mandatory army service in the Soviet Union. Despite his short career, the poet has gathered an important following among several generations of Moldovan poets. Many of Tuchilatu’s poems were written in the last few years of his short life, when he was aware of his impending death. His work was published posthumously: Sol (Messenger; Literatura Artistică, Chișinău, 1977), Fata Morgana (Fata Morgana; Literatura Artistică, Chișinău, 1989) the anthology Sol. Fata Morgana (Messenger: Sol. Fata Morgana; Glasul, 1996), Orchestrele dimineții (Morning Orchestra; Prut internațional, 2021) and the bilingual (Romanian/Russian) collection Rapsodie (Rhapsody; Glasul and Crater, 2001).
Irina Hrinoschi is a Romanian-Swiss writer, filmmaker and translator. She writes in English, German and Romanian. She is currently working on a documentary film and a collection of poetry translations by Leonard Tuchilatu with poet and translator Romana Iorga. Her writing has appeared in The Common, Random Sample Review and La Piccioletta Barca. You can find her poetry translations in SAND and The Los Angeles Review. She was recently featured in The Common 2024 Festival of Debut Authors. On Instagram she is @hrinoschi.
