by Ana Blandiana
White on White
I write in white on white
Though I know nobody
Can read it,
Not even myself,
When I’ve forgotten what I wrote.
Good is always
Hard to understand –
It’s easier to accept a blunder
Up in heaven
Than a noble human sacrifice.
I insist on writing
In white on white
Even if they tell me
To use bright
Letters at least,
When I sketch out olive boughs
Or boring
Good deeds.
However,
Here and now
I’ve just one color that contains
All the rest and I
Write in white on white
In vain.
Times
Before the past
Was the past perfect
And before
The past perfect
Was another past that
Had no start
But was lived by heart.
After the future
The future perfect comes
And after that, the threat
Of another future yet
Which, out of fear,
No one dares to imagine,
As though they believed
It could really be.
Only this moment,
In which you fall away
Eroded by each second,
Exists in this urgent now
With a present to come,
Inside of which hides
The abyss of another present time
Somewhere beyond today.
Nostalgia for Paradise
Evil, like a seed of the world,
Hidden inside a fruit
In the hermetic gardens
Of paradise,
Continues even now
To clone as in a trance
Infinite forests of trees
Of Good and Evil
As though
It couldn’t cease
To be amazed
By so many mindless victories,
While it arrogantly offers,
In every piece of fruit,
Another chance for its own defeat,
Which it overcomes
Each and every time.
And So on and So on
I only dream about myself.
Though I’m several other characters
Who terrify each other,
I know that I am always I,
Always willing to dream of this same self.
And even if I wake up
I know it’s only a dream
Of waking up
And I can hardly wait to dream that I’m asleep
To be able to dream that I’m dreaming.
How marvelous it is, this game of being myself!
A game without an end!
Because the end
Will also be something I dream and
So on and so on and so on . . .
Pause in Writing
Great pauses in writing,
Like some bizarre lull
Interrupted from time to time
By intense peals of laughter
Of a crying beast,
Unarticulated sounds
My human ear
Can find no
Meanings for
And it doesn’t know if it’s deaf
Or if the voice dictating before
Refuses to speak any more
And it feels that the howl in the wild
Is the only expression there is,
Which
I don’t know how
To write down.
Heretic
Heretic,
That is, prefers to truth
His much more wavering
Vain and human traits,
He doesn’t even pay a greater
Praise to gods
Than the amazing
Similarity
With ourselves.
My soul of the hereafter
Has always been that way:
Much more frightened of eternity
Than of death.
From Mirrors
Do not replace me,
Don’t put somebody else
In my place,
Someone you consider to be me
And you permit
In vain
To wear my words.
Have mercy on my words
If you have no mercy on me,
Don’t make me disappear
In the face of a stranger
Who shamelessly bears
My name
Without even trying to be who I am
As though
She never had known me.
Don’t make believe
That I am I, but changed,
Don’t humiliate me by
Erasing me from mirrors
And leaving me only in photographs.
Translated from Romanian by Paul Scott Derrick and Viorica Patea
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