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Four
Poems by Marin Sorescu
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Translated from the Romanian by:
Constantin Roman & Timothy J.L. Cribb. |
Published in:
Encounter, September 1971 -
"Four Poems by Marin Sorescu" |
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Paintings
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All the museums are afraid of me
Whenever I spend a whole day
In front of a painting
The following day they announce
It has disappeared.
Every day I am found stealing
In another part of the world
Yet I don't care
Either for the bullets which whistle past my ears
Or the police dogs
Which now know the smell of my steps
Better than lovers
The perfume of their beloved.
I talk loudly to the oil paintings that endanger my life
I hang them up on the clouds and trees
Then stand back to get the perspective
With the Italian masters it's easy to start a conversation
What a chatter of colours!
And so with them
I am easily detccted
Heard and seen from a distance
As if I carried parrots.
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The most difficult to steal is Rembrandt
You reach to touch him and come upon darkness
You panic, his people have no bodies
Only. eyes locked in dark cellars.
Van Gogh's canvases are mad
They swirl and turn head over heel
You must keep a tight grip With both hands
They are sucked in by some power from the Moon.
Why should Breughel make me cry
He was no older than me
Yet he was named the Elder
Because he knew evcrrthing whcn he died.
I try to learn from him
But I can't keep my tears
From running on his golden frames
As I escape with ,the seasons under my arm.
As I told you
Every night I steal a painting
With a dexterity to be envied
And yet it is such a long way
I am finally caught.
So I come home late at night
Tired, torn by dogs,
Bearing in my hands a cheap reproduction.
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Superstition
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My cat is washing herself
With the left paw
We shall have another war
For I notice
Whenever she washes
With her left paw
International tension grows
Considerably
How can she see
The five continents?
Maybe in her eyes
The pythoness moves
Who knows by heart
All the world's history
Without punctuation
I feel like crying
When I think that both I
And the heaven of souls bundled
On my back
Should depend in the last instance
On a capricious cat
Go and catch mice
Never again unleash
World wars
Fuck off
You bitch |
Fresco
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When
the wicked
Are processed in hell
Nothing goes to waste.
By means of tweezers
The women's heads are emptied of
Combs, grips, pins, rings,
Soft goods and bed linen.
Then they are thrown
Into bubbling cauldrons
To see that the brimstone
Doesn't boil over.
Afterwards some
Are changed into Saucepans
And carry to retired devils' homes
Hot sins.
The males too are made use of
For all the heavy work;
Except for the very hairy
They are rewoven
And made into doormats.
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Shakespeare
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Shakespeare created the world in seven days.
The first day he made the sky. the mountains, and the spiritual abysses.
The second day he made the rivers, the seas. the oceans,
And the other sentiments
And gave them to Hamlet, Julius Caesar, Antony, Cleopatra and Ophelia
To Othello and the others
To master them, themselves and their descendants,
Unto eternity.
The third day he gathered all people
And taught them the tastes:
The taste or happiness, of love, of distress,
The taste or jealousy, glory and so on
Until no tastes were left.
Then some characters came along late.
The creator patted them on the head sympathetically
And said the only thing left for them to become was
Literary critics
And deny his works.
The fourth and fifth days Were dedicated to laughter.
He let out the clowns to do somersaults
And let kings, emperors
And other unfortunates have fun.
The sixth day he solved some administrative problems
He plotted a storm
And taught King Lear
How to wear the crown of straws.
There was still some waste left from the creation or the world
So he made Richard III.
The seventh day he was wondering whether there was still anything
to do:
Stage directors had already flooded the earth with posters
So Shakespeare decided after so much labour
He deserved to see a show himself.
But first, as. he felt quite exhausted,
He passed away for a while. |
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Next Translation: "Ladder
To Heaven" by Marin Sorescu
Previous Translation:
Three Poems by Marin Sorescu
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