Vasile Gârneţ

summer, this year
especially in the evenings
we dared to judge ourselves
we’d put aside modesty
we’d shout with a moist inflection more androgynous than ever
in padded rooms

my life in Bessarabia, I would begin descriptively
exudes the air of an abandoned prison
we stay here and feed (the royal we didn’t bother anyone!)
an exotic uninterrupted ceremony
we subsidize the disaster

this earth is a kind of poor house, Domenico would say
a museum of errors (his palms spread out
toward us seemed to scatter his sentimental flair
and he would fall into a confused silence)

Tania would intervene in her somber style, sounding like Cassandra
and that was how we discovered that our roving tear
had gone to Bucharest
where she had won a symbolic prize
for us all
and we said a ritualistic prayer for the health of the well-doers
and for the many
who have foundered in alcoholism and denouncements
(in fact that’s exactly what we are –
denouncer-translators
- a clear and indifferent truth
better if we had never been born
we sometimes conclude confidentially
but the whisper has not yet been found
to put backbone into someone’s existence
and it all remains but a pious regret)

we are crossing the red era of the transition
(President Snegur’s favorite phrase
after a visit to China is “soveastern discipline”
how you reconcile such a juxtaposition
when you think of it translating from Moldavian to Romanian
is the hardest thing of all)

yes, Unification won’t take place this year either
Tania would reiterate in midphrase
the sad refrain cast on our faces
we’ll keep refurbishing independence/indifference
sovereignty/subterranity
we will persist in our stupidity
she continued: I’d rather tell you
about something that happened in Bucharest
and she told us a captivating story
about a scarf of Andrei Plesu’s –
her favorite professor –
a red scarf
amazing! we exclaimed
but Tania asked us to judge the events
using purely esthetic criteria
with no political implications
I praised her for her narrative talent
afterward we exercised our memorizing skills
we recited verses by American poets
for example: a poem describing a painting
of a female nude coming down a staircase
(a spiral of shiny walnut wood)
a woman, as I say, coming down toward nice people
and cameramen very competently exaggerating
her beauty, which so inspired the imagination
that we wrote a poem with reverse dynamics
a poem describing a painting
with a female nude climbing up a staircase
(a spiral staircase of shiny walnut wood
- the same decor you will note)
and down at the bottom of the stairs
nice people slightly frustrated
and the clicking of cameras
immortalizing the moment…

we called this collective composition of verse
the schoolboy phase of our existence
our pygmy delirium
the necessary springboard to reading
the only one that shields us

Translated by Cornelia Golna