He didn’t love me
the man whose sex I touched
with my fingers with my fretting lips
who touched me with his fingers
with wounds dropped by burnt lips
yesterday he uttered painful words. His voice
lacked the old syrinx timbre.
as if all our embraces had been acted
and our tongues had never twined
in the syncrisis of the kiss
and as if in the saddest evenings and silences we hadn’t caressed each other
with our fingers, with our hearts, with our lips stuck in our cotton
chunks of meat. As if we had performed
a banal act for one last time.
The other I
Your kisses follow another man’s caresses.
Your knees are rounder
your skin, whiter. Your eyes shine blue
in more troubled waters
you pour red wine drops on my lips
he spoils me with other aromas
sweet fluids, tears with a wooden pip
The glass empties and a strange light
falls lightly on my shoulders.
when you are coming nearer I wished
you saw me as beautiful as he does
I wish I had been a good fairy
I wish I were attaching butterfly wings
to good girls’ dresses.
I am nothing but the melancholy of shadows
yesterday I went down into the other man
he was hiding his bleeding wounds spring was coming
and he was in an autumn decor.
he knew I had loved you again he knew
without asking without waiting
for an answer.
And I lied for the first time
I still felt you I still heard you telling me
that the moon from under my belly
tasted like almonds.
Preface
How I would have liked at dawn
to wash my cheeks with spring water
kept in the bottle that once belonged to grandmother.
In the morning the water flows with a monotonous sound
I put mascara on my eyelashes in front of the mirror
spherical rainbows multiply and then stream
down from among my fingers.
Not everything dies colours go
into my dark hair and my mind
goes back to childhood
of grandparents’ house
only old photos are left.
I don’t want to know why in the mornings
after grandmother’s death
if I look more deeply into the mirror
I see the face of the man who went away to paint churches.
The harsh swish
of the backpack
lifted on shoulders
a train, a Rublev dream, a child
and I in an otherworldly
vapour
imagine you.
translated from the Romanian by Elena Ciobanu
Spectrum
When I spotted you before the pottery
merchant, it dawned on me how much
you resemble one of the vessels
displayed on the concrete ramp. A tall, narrow
vessel for a flower severed close to the root. Sprouted
from the black soil where I lured you. You still believe
I’ve been trapped in the potter’s wheel. Molding you. My belated
revenge. My thighs are warm. And you,
how are you doing?
translated from the Romanian by Daniela Hendea
Four Poems
Violeta Savu
translated from the Romanian by Elena Ciobanu and Daniela Hendea
Listen to the original read by the poet:
Each poetry collection by Violeta Savu takes a step beyond the themes she explored in the preceding book: the loss of parents, failed relationships, images of life and death reconstructed from surrounding images, experiences, hopes, disillusionment, and—most of all—love. In her latest, Franjuri, she ties up all the loose ends.
In the poem “Spectrum,” the potter’s wheel becomes the whirlwind that creates an object strengthened by fire, yet vulnerable to fracture. In it the remains of love are held, in the lover’s shape, like ashes in an urn. My purpose in translating was to closely follow the journey of emotion back to the symbol from which it sprang, to allow the imagery to take shape as vividly in English as it does in Romanian.
In the poem “Spectrum,” the potter’s wheel becomes the whirlwind that creates an object strengthened by fire, yet vulnerable to fracture. In it the remains of love are held, in the lover’s shape, like ashes in an urn. My purpose in translating was to closely follow the journey of emotion back to the symbol from which it sprang, to allow the imagery to take shape as vividly in English as it does in Romanian.
—Daniela Hendea
Violeta Savu is a poet, playwright, and performer born in Bacău, Romania. A graduate in mathematics, she is a member of the Uniunea Scriitorilor din România (Writers’ Union of Romania) and an editor of Ateneu Journal, to which she contributes book reviews and fine arts essays. She has published four poetry books: Refugii în lyric (Shelters in Lyric, 2004), Atocmiri (Forging Rhymes, 2006), Din depărtare el mă vedea frumoasă (From Afar He Saw Me Beautiful, 2011), and Franjuri (Fringes, 2016). She received a playwriting award for the play Clara și Robert. Hârtie cu portative (Clara and Robert. Music paper with staves), recomposing the love and life story of artists Clara and Robert Schumann. She performed her latest show, Je suis Frida (a dramatic poem), on the stage of “Tristan Tzara and Dada Culture” at The International Symposium, Moinești, Romania in 2019. She wrote the preface to the fine art collection “Deliver-ME,” an international project by artists Mia Nazarie and Maja Engler.
Elena Ciobanu is an associate professor at the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Vasile Alecsandri University of Bacău, Romania. She obtained her Ph.D. in English and American literature at the Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Romania in 2008, with a magna cum laude distinction. Her research areas are English and American modern and postmodern poetry, poetics, narrative discourse, poetic discourse, and cultural studies. Her publications include a monograph, Sylvia Plath’s Poetry: The Metamorphoses of the Poetic Self (2009), the literary translations Sylvia Plath & Ted Hughes, Lady Lazarus şi hoţul de lumină (2002) and Sylvia Plath: Selected Poems/Poeme alese (2012), academic lectures, articles, and reviews. She is also a published poet and regularly contributes essays and poetry translations to national cultural journals from Romania and abroad.
Daniela Hendea is a Romanian poet and translator. She made her debut with the poetry volume Acordor de Teremin (Theremin Tuner), published by Fractalia Press in 2018, which was nominated for two major Romanian literary awards. Her poetry and literary translations have appeared in various Romanian literary journals. An editor of the Romanian online publication Prăvălia Culturală, she currently lives in Texas with her family.
