Dorin Popa - poetry 1. NOBODY UNDERSTANDS ANYBODY so many times I had absurd claims I thought my soul was a perfect radar for your steps, your breath your weeping with ardour and love we could finally reach in peace the other s skin if we didn t discover with disappointment that we are the prisoners of our epidermis and your singing, and your weeping, and your look, the emotions, the incomparable and your dreams all of them are mine for ever tearfully, crying, I hold you hopelessly I embrace you like I ll never embrace you again you exist in me deeper than in your heart and shaken, I whisper to you from a distance nobody has ever understood anybody! 1
2. MY DEATH MY LIFE had things not hit me with such fury I might not have seen them I might have never cared about them my sadness my joy sometimes I am allowed to see how evil mingles with good how from their combination everything comes to life my death my life I would have never found the way to you if I hadn t wandered about if so many nights hadn t blinded me if I hadn t found comfort in loneliness sometimes in the middle of the tempest deep silence overwhelms me and while I am hit, battered and slashed I can see in silence how my death feeds my life 3. CONCUBINAGE after I was cured I found out how ill I was, after I did not love you anymore the need of you fell devastatingly upon me after I am not anymore perhaps I shall indeed grasp everything 2
4. NOWHERE I am nowhere present nor absent anywhere many a time had I the wish to cease existing, although I have never really lived nearby the stinging nettle is in imperial bloom nearby coloured airplanes are taking off I have not been sentenced anywhere but I can find escape nowhere 5. WHAT DO I EXPECT? what do I expect, now when I don t expect anything, anymore?! I carefully counted all my malformations all my helplesnesses and I happily gathered my entire misfortunes in my soul what do I expect? the waste, the loneliness the ragged and cobwebbed remains of the puzzle the infections, the mud, the slag, the confusion kept me warm, stifled me and yet and yet now when I don t expect anything what do I expect?? 3
6. REVOLVING ON AN UNSUSPECTED SECRET COMMAND I ve always been thriled by the moment when men lose their little wings, by the moment when they begin to slowly revolve around their own lives with a kind of frenezy with the same amazement I ve always watched intrigued how my fellow creatures plunge into their lives with indifference with indifference and fatigue with a sweet and sad exhaustion like a stone surreptitiously my friends revolve themselves into silence some easily, with discrete smiles, as if joking some others, resolutely, stubbornly hasten to shake their flakes off and in vain do I call out to them, in vain do I shout in despair and pull them back by their feet they have sunk into their lives to their waist, to their ears they don t want, oh, they don t want to hear anything but the nourishing sound of their revolving around this world, this life, this death oh, my friends have all disappeared swallowed by their dull, hungry brown desperate lives and I, strange and immature, see how the possible is narrowing how it turns into a spot, into a trace into the dim breath of a memory, and afterwards nobody can remember anything about it CONFESSION IN DECEMBER so many times have I asked the other to take a right view of things but I haven t done so! All my condemnations have stayed in front of me for years, but I couldn t follow them I didn t know to understand them I couldn t see them to the end 4
never anything have I known to expiate to the end! my youth only elapses, joy only elapses, life only elapses, my guilt remains unchanged never, anything have I known to expiate to the end; I ve always been harshly asking the other to take a right view of things, but I haven t done so! and now, when I am no longer expecting anything my hope is stronger than ever. 7. SELF PORTRAIT all that I could touch and I do not all that I could understand and I do not all that I could be and I am not 8. PROEM I forgot to tell you that I do exist I know, this will seem dreadful, dreadful to you but forgive me forgive me forgive me! it was much later that I found this out long after you had left 5
9. THROUGH THE BARS, I PERCEIVE THE DELICATE FLOWING OF DESTINY hardly had winter come when spring was gone already hardly had I begun to close in on you when you moved away for good and only after death took me kindly by the hand have I started living. 10. AMEN I was not you were not and we will not be maybe only this serene moment of rousing the unbeing within us over our tombs it will be usefully snowing 11. DUST AND ASHES There is a worm hidden in the Cosmos ( Constantin Noica ) even though things are stained in wonder I notice: they are still getting further stained no one ever stops, no one ever advances. once very closely a pure sound passed those that can still hear it hasten to forget it 6
12. AN ATTEMPT TO INTRODUCE MYSELF when you lean over me who do you lean on and when you wait for me for such a long while, when you wait for me, like that, with a kind of deserted hope, who do you wait for? 13. POETRY, IN DECEMBER much more depressing is the world in December suicide is walking around much, much more aggressively if I get rid of this winter and of this illness and of this death, I know for sure that when summer comes I shall be longing for December SOME PERSECUTIONS DO NOT EVER STOP that gauntlet thrown down long ago I pick it up every day 14. I AM EMMA BOVARY MYSELF I wouldn t have dared to face you if I had seen myself the way I am 7
15. PRAISE TO LIFE AND TO THE DREAMS THAT ACCOMPANY IT TO THE END I m slowly decaying and I m still making plans for the future 16. JAMAIS VU I do not recognize anything anymore, I do not know, I do not remember a stranger through my life preoccupied, I hurriedly pass. only sometimes do I perceive my trembling, fearful, helpless heart, heart an animal on the brink of extinction 17. A NEW BEGINNING, MAYBE THE BEGINNING in your eyes, the world looks younger to me, ill and young, dying and young, anytime ready to open, in its last spasm towards beauty The snowfall of last night like a fragile shield which covers the uncertainty, the impatience of being 18. A QUESTION Do not drink the waters of death. ( St. Anthony the Great ) let us purify the place then let us wisely wait and will Beauty itself stop some day in front of us? 8
19. YOUR TEARS OF THOSE DAYS misshaped, rumpled, memories put on a new apparel each season but, as years pass by, I remember everything more and more clearly I could even touch now your tears of those days FORGIVE ME if my torment touches you, forgive me! 20. FEVERISH PREPARATIONS FOR JOURNEY today, well locked up in myself I might leave for a deep journey I know I need a lot of things but first let me close the window carefully, close the drawers, stop the music and slowly close my eyes today I think I shall go far, far away, there s a favourable wind blowing from my memories PR DIOGEN pro kultura http://www.diogenpro.com 9