Catching Me With a Song

WITH A GREEN SCARF
—Marin Sorescu

With a green scarf I blindfolded
the eyes of the trees
and asked them to catch me.

At once the trees caught me,
their leaves shaking with laughter.

I blindfolded the birds
with a scarf of clouds
and asked them to catch me.

The birds caught me
with a song.

Then with a smile I blindfolded
my sorrow
and the day after it caught me
with a love.

I blindfolded the sun
with my nights
and asked the sun to catch me.

I know where you are, the sun said,
just behind that time.
Don't bother to hide any longer.

Don't bother to hide any longer,
said all of them,
as well as all the feelings
I tried to blindfold.

(translated from the Romanian by Michael Hamburger)

______________________

PRECAUTIONS
—Marin Sorescu

I pulled on a suit of mail
made of pebbles
worn smooth by water.

I balanced a pair of glasses
on my neck
so as to keep an eye
on whatever
was coming behind me.

I gloved and greaved
my hands, my legs, my thoughts,
leaving no part of my person
exposed to touch
or other poisons.

Then I fashioned a breastplace
from the shell
of an eight-hundred-year-old
turtle.

And when everything was just so
I tenderly replied:
—I love you too.

(translated from the Romanian by Paul Muldoon and Joana Russell-Gebbett)

_____________________

FRESCO
—Marin Sorescu

In hell, maximum use
Is made of the sinners.

With the help of tweezers,
Brooches and bracelets, hairpins and rings,
Linen and bedclothes
Are extracted from the heads of the women.
Who are subsequently thrown
Into boiling cauldrons
To keep an eye on the pitch,
And see that it doesn't boil over.

Then some of them
Are transformed into dinner pails
In which hot sins are carried to the domiciles
Of pensioned-off devils.

The men are employed
For the heaviest work,
Except for the hairiest of them,
Who are spun afresh
And made into mats.

(translated from the Romanian by D.J. Enright and Joana Russell-Gebbett)

_____________________

THE TEAR
—Marin Sorescu

I weep and weep a tear
Which will not fall
No matter how much I weep.

Its pang in me
Is like the birth of an icicle.

Colder and colder, the earth
Curves on my eyelid,
The northern ice-cap keeps rising.

O, my arctic eyelid.

(translated from the Romanian by Seamus Heaney and Joana Russell-Gebbett)

______________________

We're celebrating the Year of the Dog—send Medusa a poem of your own this week—about dogs or new beginnings or whatever tweaks your pen—and I'll send you a rattlechap, either James DenBoer's Black Dog, or Jeanine Stevens' new The Keeping Room, or any Rattlechap you don't already have (let me know). Your poem has to get to me by FRIDAY, though, so email is probably best: kathykieth@hotmail.com.

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets. Previously-published poems are okay for Medusa’s Kitchen, as long as you own the rights. (Please cite publication.)