Three Poems by Marin Sorescu
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Translated from the Romanian by:

Constantin Roman & Timothy J.L. Cribb.

Published in:

Encounter, December 1972 -
"Three Poems by Marin Sorescu"
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Passport
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To cross the border
Between the sunflower
And the moonflower
Between the alphabet
Of handwritten events
And printed events.

To be friend of all atoms
Which form the light
To sing with the atoms which sing
To cry
With the atoms which die
To enter into all the days of one's life
Without restriction
No matter whether they fall on one side or the other
Of the word
Earth.

This passport
Is written in my bones
On my skull, femur, phalanges and spine
All arranged in a way
To make clear
My right to be man.

Translation
..........................

I was sitting an exam
In a dead language
And I had to trans
I ate myself
From man into ape.

I played it cool,
First translating a text
From a forest.

But the translation got harder
As I drew nearer to myself.
With some effort
I found, however, satisfactory equivalents
For nails and the hair on the feet.

Around the knees
I started to stammer.
Towards the heart my hand began to shake
And blotted the paper with light.

Still, I tried to patch it up
With the hair or the chest,
But utterly failed
At the soul.

   
   
   
  Menu
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For breakfast a thin buttered slice
Of life.
With it we take water which rises incessantly
(Last night it covered three-quarters of the globe}
And boil it sterile of microbes.

For lunch we eat well and substantially
Three courses of earth:
Black earth, loess and clay.

We don't usually have a cooked dinner.
We take
Either a star with a bit of honey
Or if it isn't finished
Some happiness (which in fact we keep
For Sundays)
And whatever else is left over.



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Next Translation:
Four Poems by Marin Sorescu

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