Vasile Gârneţ

Aş vrea să mai ajung în America. Acum e vorba despre altceva.
Spuneam că-mi plac mesajele e-mail, englezo-române, ale lui Carrie Messenger – sunt expresive, mobilizatoare, decisive, optimiste, pătimaÅŸe… Carrie îmi traduce în engleză poemele, uneori le traducem împreună…
Zilele acestea am primit de la Carrie, din SUA, patru reviste literare cu poeme de-ale mele: Poetry International, 12/2008 (San Diego State University) – Spoiled Man (Omul deteriorat); Rhino, 2008 (Evanston, Illinois) – Neume II (Neumă II); Circumference. Poetry in translation, Volume 6, Issue 2, Autumn 2007 (Columbia University, New York) – Contemplating a puddle (Contemplând o mocirlă);  Ashville Poetry Review, vol.14, no. 12007 – issue 17 (Asheville, North Carolina) – Sings For The Initiated (Semne pentru iniÅ£iaÅ£i).
Iată cum sună în engleză Neumă II, Semne pentru iniţiaţi, Contemplând o mocirlă.  Poemul Omul deteriorat l-am pus pe blog mai înainte.
 

neume (II)

without solemnity, Ioana and I are discussing
the therapeutic value of illusions
we drink tea from a giant Russian samovar
at a round table with wheels, placed
so there’s light from a window,
a place made famous by our wit

(I told myself this is like a stage-set
I’ll always remember
still perfecting it each time
as if making notes in the margin of a text
for example: in my future memory
the table with wheels will symbolize
the epoch’s transient spirit
the Russian samovar – Slavic influence
the white tea-cups with generous handles
comfortable and bourgeois – our escape
into the free world – one spring in Berlin with Grig and Emil
and so on) 

like this, I would stay and talk with Ioana
in the haughty anonymity of these kitchens
it was quiet outside, except from time to time when
some Romanian guy or another curses fiercely,
beaten down by the heat
but all for nothing, for nothing
the normal life has this kind of equalizing pressure
and communism isn’t in any kind of hurry
to return as Marxist literature

what glossy directing!
this solitude conceals
profound traumas, I’ve thought
and I feel a desire to write tragically
in your names

sings for the initiated

like I said, we were at the movie
in the soundtrack I caught
Nini Rosso’s trumpet
and Ioana squeezed my hand – a sign
of solidarity between the initiated
the scent of cheap apple spray in the hall
gave us an easy sense of superiority over others
(at least we know how to defend ourselves against poverty,
that is we understand it better, I thought)
later on I wanted to hold her gloves
- navy blue – and I dropped a coin
that rolled and rolled (like in Tarkovski)
on the floor’s waxed and resonant wood
”trilulilu!” someone whistled
maybe wanting to share with us
our mortification for releasing this din
(really, the noise of the rolling coin seemed like a din to me –
though, with this sensitivity of mine,
I could be exaggerating)

on screen a lady with a broad-brimmed
feathered hat saunters into a church
(a Catholic church, Ioana points out afterwards)
fog is eating the white walls
but this detail doesn’t dissolve the film
the landscape is directed well throughout
a montage is used: under the street lamps
children shine the boots of a soldier with holding a horsewhip in his hand
(no, it wasn’t a hostile relationship
it was an idyll with multiple possibilities for development)
buildings with columns and painted frontispieces
a few pale-green houses… the clocktower – its long shadow
humble the cobblestone all the way over to the stage
where the contestants play the flute,
multi-colored flora and fauna,
abandoned objects,
an old man in a cemetery tapping a wooden cross
with a stick of hazelwood asking, but who’s here?
next scene
a harpist in a meditative pause
(her dress has a moribund color
something possibly announcing danger)
an amateur at bridge who shouts
he knows how we build the rose bonbon
a deserted train station where the animal kingdom
enacts the rituals of separations
the soundtrack again – Nini Rosso’s trumpet
and our regret that history keeps so little
of all this

outside it’s snowing as it does inside a Christmas card

contemplating a puddle

if you stay and contemplate a puddle at length
and if you realize what is happening to you
(you can’t avoid the process of absorption)
and you still have courage to speak – with a remnant
of the arrogance belonging to the species in which you are numbered -
of how many dangers lie in wait for you
in this not at all happy condition
does it have to mean that you cultivate yourself
- with voluptuous satisfaction -
a tragic image?

to sum it up is simply: our history doesn’t have style
what else could this roar of mine mean
inside the fruit-press of Balkan confusions?
my murder – beautiful like a sin
on a firing range, without destiny’s ambiguities?

wild angel, they’ll call me
avoiding a late opinion (as in Proust)
from their fear of seeming vulgar