On Vasile Baghiu's poetry: Translating Alienation – Between Escapism And Adventure by Cristina Savin (Coolabah, Nr 30, 2021)

 

Translating Alienation – Between Escapism And Adventure by Cristina Savin (Coolabah, Nr 30, 2021)

Coolabah, Nr 30, 2021, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians i Transnacionals / Observatory: Australian and Transnational Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona (Copyright © 2021 Cristina   Savin).  

The text and the translated poems can be find in the magazine Coolabah HERE

 

The poems translated have been selected from Vasile Baghiu’s debut poetry collection The taste of alienation. Published in 1994, the collection represents the genesis of Baghiu’s story of poetic chimerism that spans three decades and eight volumes of poems. But the first chimeric ideas materialised, quietly, six years before The taste of alienation saw the light of day, at the height of the totalitarian regime in his native Romania. At the time, the poet was working as a nurse in a tuberculosis sanatorium, consumed by a sense of isolation in the depths of which he had a life-altering, liberating epiphany that shaped his identity and his understanding of the world.  He  realised  that  he  could  be  someone  else,  that  he  could  escape  the  personal, geographical and intellectual constraints imposed by the regime, and could virtually live a parallel life. And so poetic chimerism was born, as a means of evading ‘les maux de la société’, as  a  form  of  personal  freedom  made  possible  through  imagination  and  the  re-creation,  in writing, of imaginary travels through space and time.

When asked about the concept that he coined, poetic chimerism, Baghiu portrays it not as a literary style, but as a way of life that he devised with the help of poetry. (1) This way of life infuses his entire oeuvre –poetry and prose –because many aspects of his existence, including his irrepressible desire to travel and understand the world, are intimately connected with poetic chimerism. Based on Jules de Gaultier’s philosophical system, the concept is a cross between bovarysme and literature that brings together four defining elements, all born out of a sense of despair: imaginary journey, transfiguration, disease and science. (2)

Imaginary journey denotes a way of escaping the socio-political constraints and the cultural provincialism of the time, and led to the creation of Himerus Alter, an alter-ego, a universal, stateless citizen, who, unlike the poet, was able to travel without restraint through space and time. The presence of the second element, disease, is made possible by the poet’s work as a nurse and  represents  a  reality  devoid  ofthe  superficiality  that  marked  the  intellectual  and literary landscape of the time. Baghiu’s poems are imbued with an obsession for illness, in the same way the lungs of thepatientshe cared for, while he worked at the sanatorium, were infused with bacilli. (3) As the poems translated attest, patients emerge as a true measure of lyricism. (4) The third element of transfiguration is the symbolic space where new experiences are created,  where  the  poet  becomes  someone  else  and  poetry  metamorphoses  into  an expression of estrangement. Science, the fourth and final element, turns into poetic adventure and infuses the poetic space with quarks, DNA, chemical elements, theorems and magnetic fields. (5)

This ground-breaking concept, detailed in Baghiu’s four Manifestos of chimerism (Baghiu, 2011), and  the  accompanying  collections  of  poetry,  have  been  the  inspiration  for  my collaboration with the poet, which resulted in two projects. The first is a study of the process of writing poetry, published in Poetry in Process (2019) that also includes a translated poem, ‘On the sideline’, from his arresting collection The Manner(first published in 1998). The second is an essay, currently in development, that explores the intersection between poetic chimerism and the poet’s identity and its evolution through time. I opted for this collaborative approach between myself, the author and the text, and the reimagining of his poetic space, as my non-traditional approach to translation and the framework of thinking about the act of translation.

Having read the entire poetic oeuvre that Baghiu has produced over the last three decades, I came to realise that the most pertinent way to approach my translation of the selected poems was to understand the philosophy behind alienation and escapism, to inhabit its poetic space and to reimagine it, anew, in translation. Such approach was fashioned in a distinctive way, by travelling the uneasy road of chimerism through our concerted effort of composing the essay. The resultant translated poems became an activity rather than a product (Wilson & Gerber, 2012),  an  activity  that  culminated  in  the  rebirth  of  Baghiu’s  verse  and  voice,  one  which reverberates through time, but in a different tongue.

Our collaborative  essay paved  the  way  for  an  in-depth  understanding  of  alienation  and escapism and helped elucidate various points in the source text, therefore informing many translation choices. My translation aims to capture and preserve the grim space of political, social and cultural constraints, in which poetic chimerism serves as the only alternative to counteract the loneliness, isolation, despair and, as the poet astutely put it, the ‘devastating obscurantism’ (the poem ‘The outsider’, 1994). I take Peter Bush’s view that ‘subjectivity is a key ingredient in the reinterpretation that infuses the writing of the translation, the choice of words and their rhythm’ (2013, p. 39). As such, certain translation choices were made to evoke a particular image, sound or rhythm in the source text, which I wanted to retain in the target text:

I too heard, in horror, the screams of the Indians

Running down the Allegheny Mountains,

Their arrows pierced me as well, the man at the frontier.

 

Cu groază am auzit şi eu ţipetele indienilor

Care coborau dinspre Aleghani,

Săgeţile lor m-au atins şi pe mine, cel de la frontieră.

 

Translating a poem, or indeed just a few lines, to paraphrase Boase-Beier, provide ‘for different levels  of  compensation  and  therefore  present  different  possibilities  of  matching  texts  and realising their different potentials’ (2014, p. 12). As such, rendering m-au atins as touched me, which is quite literal, did not deliver the powerful image that accompanies the screams of the Indians, so I opted for pierced. I felt that pierced encompasses both the sound of the screams and the image of the arrows reaching the man at the frontier. Similarly, I translated coborau as running down, rather than the more literal descending, to capture the dramatic effect of the scene.

Just like a scientist conducting a chemistry experiment, I aim to sublimate the hidden meaning behind some of the words and find ways to render this meaning into the target language. I am constantly  reminded  that Baghiu is a wordsmith and a magician,  who  skillfully breaks  the rhythm and the flow of the verse to create striking images, while successfully preserving the inner harmony and the message of the poem. His verse is densely populated with fascinating stories and unusual protagonists. One such example resides in his spirited poem ‘The night bar’.

I know, I will reflect upon the future that falls apart,

And all the books are worthless if ulcers drill inside your body,

As he used to say when he was younger

And sporting a surrealist moustache à la Salvador Dali,

Who brags in “La vie secrète...” that he liked to wet the bed

Until the age of ten, that he saw colours in his mother’s uterus,

In the warm, pleasant dampness of her uterus.

 

Our collaborative essay helped to unravel and grasp the meaning behind the poet’s life and work,and provided a fertile ground for my translation decisions and a fresh way to think about the act of translation. It is my hope that the reader will take the journey, alongside the poet and myself, into a world of science, disease, art and poetic adventure.

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(1)    Unless otherwise indicated, all unreferenced citations pertaining to Vasile Baghiu’s work are sourced directly from my correspondence with the author, including collaborative essay and personal communication; all translations are my own.

(2)    Adapted from the Manifestos of chimerism.

(3)    Collaborative essay, 2020.

(4)    Personal communication with the poet and study of poetry in process, 2019.

(5)    Adapted from the Manifestos of chimerism and personal communication with the poet, 2019.

 

In the magazine Coolabah, the English versions of the following poems are featured along the original ones written in the Romanian languages.

 

THE OUTSIDER

 

I belong to this world that pushes me to the edge,

That protects and aggresses me alike,

As I try to suppress my anger, indignation, and horror

In the face of the devastating obscurantism.

In the Canary I adorned the graceful Niña with square sails, at Las Palmas,

And I listened to Bartolomé de Torres confess his crime

While sailing away to escape the death row.

I watched La Rabida Monastery fading in the distance,

Like a sign from God,

With the sadness of that early morning departure poisoned by scepticism.

I saw streets that could not be crossed,

With an endless river of automobiles flowing

Before my heavy eyes.

An outsider, antagonized by contrasts,

I deplored the weakness that is holdings us back,

That is pushing us into a vortex of desolation, at the foot of the Acropolis,

Among those little houses, the global suburbia,

and at Veliko Tarnovo alike,

Strolling along bakeries, where the warmth of baked bread faded into the street,

In the old Europe and the old Japan alike,

And in America, just as old,

Rejuvenated by Columbus with the decrepitude of the old Europe,

With all the fuss over modernism.

I rugged up in my hooded wool coat

And we listened to the rippling and the swell of the ocean,

Contemplating our bare feet, stretched on the freshly cleaned deck,

And we breathed in the zephyr.

We no longer yearn for something from the image of our window

Facing the courtyard filled with crates,

We lost hope in the fearless progression through time,

Unwillingly tripping over the orphan, abandoned children,

Crying incessantly on the stairwell.

I try to understand the misery in which we sink,

Without admitting it,

Defeated by our stupid arrogance.

I, too, saw the fog and the seagulls, a whale, pelicans,

And an adorned rod, that energised us.

And on that moonlit night I screamed with joy

When I heard Juan Rodriguez: “Lumbre! Tierra!”.

This refuge, the anxiety, the gentle hesitation outside the iron gates,

Wondering if you ought not to ring the bell, and yet you ring,

Urgently, three times, waiting for the valet who’s also in charge of the parking lot.

I sobbed again, knowing that a sobbing grown man is a disgrace.

I lived my life according to rules that I tried hard to break,

But tomorrow, I hope,

Tomorrow I will be beyond reproach.

With Díaz del Castillo I marveled at the size of the gold trays

And the mosaics with feathers

The Aztecs showed us.

An outsider, I found myself again in auspicious days,

Losing myself for years to come

In a senseless struggle,

That some, politely, used to call resistance.

I saw streets covered in leaves

And streets cleaned with soap by sweeper trucks,

Impoverished streets, like some people,

Like these starving crowds,

Streets where you wander and enjoy taking a stroll,

Where the ambulance siren is always present,

I am lost, my thoughts confused by ads

And by this incomprehensible commotion.

I think you can all hear this sound, in your hearts,

The sound of a bell under water, the sweetness of a memory always running,

Like a squirrel that once ate out of your hand,

At the sanatorium, in the garden with a fountain.

And after all these I am rather alone,

Remembering the burning teocalli.

It is refreshing how they open the door for you, ceremoniously,

Onto the lights of the grand reception,

Accustomed to women resembling Aztec queens, nostalgic, distinguished.

I think you all feel the nightfall in your hearts,

But, against my will, I keep falling,

Trying to hold onto roots and clumps of grass,

Onto sharp rocks that hurt me deeply,

As if in a dream, as if in a book

Whose author is a heartless, soulless pessimist.

I am one of the fortunate survivors of that “noche triste”,

I saw Cortés cry

His forehead against a tree,

And as I breathe, some kind of fatigue

Knocks me onto the rain-soaked pavement

Where irritating crowds of bystanders surround me,

Crowds of women who slap me across the face, trying

To resuscitate me, viciously, in a strange city

In a foreign country, in a language I don’t understand.

I witnessed the moment when the Inca threw the Bible

that friar Valverde offered, under a serene sky

That anyone, from any time, could contemplate.

Ever since then it feels as if a wall is crumbling,

A wall we once snuggled up to,

Shivering, as if against a warm fire place

In the waiting room of a lonely train halt

Surrounded by silvery poplars that could be seen from afar.

Everything is messed up and turned upside down

As if following a brutal search,

It is your unblemished imagination, too, that keeps you happy

And hungry for parties that make you forget.

But there is always someone waiting,

And time is cruel, and the luxurious cruise ships depart,

Leaving us daydreaming on the wet pier.

I saw roads with markings worn out by the footsteps of a crowd,

A crowd that seems to be stopping sometimes,

To listen to a sign, to the sound of a bell that is new and strange,

When you hear it in a town where you arrive for the first time,

Like Pecs, or Ruse, or even the cold and elegant Lund,

Where my imagination takes me, as I try

To escape a familiar place.

I travelled this world of ours

And there is nothing strange in the timelessness of my attitude,

Because, in some ways, all those times belong to me,

And I could swear I’ve travelled here and there and elsewhere,

And I could bear witness to Hernando de Soto’s cry of pain,

On the shore of the Mississippi river,

Before his troubled death.

An outsider, I found myself ailing, overwhelmed by debt,

Surrounded by insidious gossip oozing from cosy corners,

Where coffee was brewing.

Ah, the luxury and arrogance of composing two anaemic verses

under the eternal stars!

Fleeting joy of those long-time sufferers

Still smoking in the toilets where

The overpowering smell of urine burns my eyes.

I drove nails into the wood boards of the Québec fortress,

And I spent the winter there, in the wilderness,

On that island on James Bay,

That is now the vibrant Jamestown,

Where you read newspapers in the park,

Minding the noisy children,

I too heard, in horror, the screams of the Indians

Running down the Allegheny Mountains,

Their arrows pierced me as well, the man at the frontier.

What was I looking for back then?

Even today I cannot find my place on the streets

Of a provincial town in Romania.

I belong to this multicolored world, to this decrepit mediocrity,

To this commotion that makes our convalescence bearable through diversity,

Through the past that carries us

With the apathy that gives us comfort in death.

  

AILING AND CONSTANTLY AWAKENED BY A SIGH

Ailing and constantly awakened by a sigh that I keep hearing

through the walls of this hotel’s rooms,

I believe I am dreaming, far away and estranged like a ghost,

believe the fever will raise me to the sky.

I am enticed by a futurewith its image of floating skyscrapers,

deep in my chest I hear the faint whisper of vocal chords exposing my emotions,

of alveoli perforated and stifled by their own warmth,

the human warmth we crave

when we’re lonely and bitter.

Will I arrive somewhere?

I’m looking for a street, a number, friendly cities

that I will never see again,

with their quiet buses

carrying healthy passengers, with newspapers in their hands.

It’s difficult to let myself go,

In vain I try to resist, shoved, pushed around,

into a quiet corner,

ailing and constantly awakened in some hotels,

ailing and weak, reported missing

in places I stayed, where people knew me.

  

CONVERSATIONS WITH MADAME BOVARY

It’s all too much if it makes us smile.

I reclaim nothing, we’ve learned not to ask for much in life.

A glass in hand and sitting among guests

We no longer have reasons to complain,

You cry no more, as I was tempted to believe

That tears were an excuse for your difficult character.

But from the tour bus the old cemetery unfolded before our eyes

And we caught a glimpse of it among the colourful houses,

When the landscape changes,

While I rummage around my luggage for a thermos

and the moon rises, in the middle of the day,

like a wispy thread trimmed out of Cirrus clouds,

And this already reminds me of plague-stricken times.

But we’d better cross the valleys and the mountains

To reach the everlasting sea,

Where a black ship or a paddle steamer waits for us,

Packed full of adventurers who will later vomit, out to sea,

Bending over the white handrail of the deck.

I thought life will sing with me in my travels

And there was even a moment of confrontation

In the middle of the suspension bridge

Where some man I had never seen before stopped me,

And told me to be strong no matter what,

And the river was flowing, unrestrained, beneath our feet.

We were in passing, as we’ve been for a while

Where we still hope to find trails left by snow sleds, blood

Or some shreds of clothing.

Others have suffered, maybe even more.

We can see them, at the checkout counter,

Fumbling through their pockets and leavings hopping behind.

With us, there was some playful taunting,

That brought us to this beach,

Close to the caves in which we will fall, where life takes us,

Our life in New York, not long ago,

Our unwavering faith in the flower by the window.

We were in passing, as we’ve been for a while,

Longing for spring to prevail,

Like a spume under which we fuel the fire with a few dry branches,

But I want to say something

To distract you from crying,

Here, you understand, there is no one to protect us.

I will tell a story, a candid story

About a sordid December afternoon with glowing sun,

As in novels where the ones who die are the protagonists with hearts of gold.

The pulse and the life of the pulse in blood, in a ghetto

Where I saw a black man

with his ear glued to the radio,

While the moon went up in the sky

And we thought about our little countries,

Migrants searching for some kind of happiness,

She reminded me that we were once rich,

That some days we hunted for pleasure,

Although I was sad because my ailing kidneys forced me

To go to the toilet often.

I now wonder what I would have done had I lived

In a medieval Versailles, with no bathrooms and toilets.

I was singing, humming,

And it’s true that sometimes I made a complete fool of myself.

Sad, I watched those agile dogs,

Sad, I listened to them bark in the distance.

We were rich, we squandered all our money,

Because you loved Wimbledon, in summer,

In the open court,

Where we followed the white tennis ball, with sunglasses on,

Until our necks ached, yes, your patience

That surprised me then and a long time after,

Had nothing of the anxiety of those sweltering days

On wide Miami beaches,

When sand ran playfully through your fingers,

When you burst into tears,

When you asked me to go, and I was behaving foolishly.

I knew, I thought about life so fleeting,

About the tennis racket that was slipping

With hesitant strikes,

Making spectators laugh, feel resentful.

But, for you, maybe the shore was a sign,

With the cosmopolitan bar where you confessed

You were afraid of being alone,

Like everyone else, I said, like every sensitive, learned woman,

And if you didn’t want to walk into the barber shop

I wouldn’t have mused about the fashion magazines

Printed on glossy paper,

Because I often asked myself if there is someone

Who removes the traces and delivers us to evil,

As we walk along the beach,

And you are rather unimpressed,

Inspired by distinguished American poets,

Nodding off in rocking chairs. If I recognised spontaneity, I’d be more certain

And wouldn’t stumble like I did on the day

we buried our colleague from the conservatory,

I would try to salvage something from the aristocratic glory

That some compared, kindly, to the poetry of Montale.

I don’t think anyone will harm us,

Except perhaps in some incident, as that night in rainy Ireland,

When a landslide carried us all the way to the river,

Together with the wooden shack where we slept.

You started to talk, then we laughed

Eating apples that resembled your knees.

We couldn’t come up with an original compliment, so we laughed once more,

And in the evening, in Dublin, the rain came

And chased us away from a window with dolls,

We didn’t know where to go from there, except to the train station,

And suddenly you were overwhelmed by tears,

And, as I said, the night came,

The same night in the Milano train station, with freezing cold and mud,

When, wrapped in fur, you uttered strange words

Some regret you tried to confess, an outrage

Against a South you no longer loved,

With these relics of life where we could find shelter,

But you said that it’s not death or life that constrains us,

But this torrential rain, the steep cliff,

With red flowers that I mistook for blood spots,

This locked door,

The notes on the white margins of the page

from where you still believe death begins.

 

THE NIGHT BAR

 

Some would say I exist,

But I fear I’ll die among bottles and vials,

Drowning in this useless melancholy, and you

Have every reason to feel sorry for me – I’ve been foolish enough

To talk about poetry right here, among glasses and ashtrays,

Saying, for example, that poetry is a form of resistance

Against idiocy, aggressivity, war, violence, and forgetting

The dying bodies chained to some drips.

I thought you could simply go home to read,

Or to live, as the book says, forgetting

The fragile women who suffer endlessly, and other things,

Little things we shouldn’t worry about,

Sickness that bestows upon life a voluptuous abundance, a kind of desire

To idle on hospital beds, shadows

On a reverberating corridor, at night, and we feel frustrated

When we hear someone cough.

There’s emptiness in these strange times,

And this spring fading in the spiral of time keeps us going,

We are its innocent children, and these ships have passed

Leaving a subtle smoke in the air,

Before this morning’s first light, when the dog inside me began to rebel.

Then I let them drink the wine and love the women

Who wasted time on those tall bars tools.

Some man’s hands were shaking,

Buthe still partied hard.

I know, I will reflect on the future that falls apart,

And all the books are worthless if ulcers drill inside your body,

As he used to say when he was younger

And sporting a surrealist moustache à la SalvadorDali,

Who brags in La vie secrète...that he liked to wet the bed

Until the age of ten, that he saw colours in his mother’s uterus,

In the warm, pleasant dampness of her uterus.

And I reflect upon the future, thus, and mark my words,

the future is nothing but a forsaken well.

It’s true, yet we keep going, like in a story.

Suffering is not important in this turmoil,

Because we went astray a long time ago,

In a distant past

That gave us the illusion of confidence,

Brought to us this vortex devouring the manuscripts,

Back then, in that distant past,

When I drank alcohol hoping to die,

When I went back to my place of hiding in the forest

As a fugitive in the spring of my youth.

No one would budge, no one, even if you tried to tempt them.

If someone would scream now...

I went back to those places, I wept,

I crossed the strange landscape,

The big cities made me regain, faintly,  

A sort of calm maturity that I had lost.

Light passes through like death,

A painful, short-lived moment,

Then it’s over, it’s forgotten, but still important to surpassit.

“Oh, my God! she said (having turned spiritual somehow),

And to think that we’re all waiting for the moment

That we won’t be able to recount...

”Then she shouted another round

Although already drunk.

Those countless, forgotten nights,

Brought me closer to people,

And I agreed to drink with them,

But the malaise next morning made me turn against them.

Because of my cynical nature, perhaps, I tolerate memories

That would bring other people to tears.

Some doors will always be closed for me.

I wish I chose a simple life,

To dream at will,

To not be forced to put on a fake smile.

I saw something somewhere, in the distance,

A flickering light bulb,

Some kind of flowing clouds, birds with same faces,

But passing through.

And then this unbearable obligation

To always go back to the beginning.

We didn’t cry, we lived in a permanent state of indifference,

We saw people and we listened to inanities

Patiently, politely,

Willingly, she would say, singing her words.

But you could come back

To start a new life somewhere in America,

Or maybe in Australia, so full of kangaroos, look,

A warmer ray of sun was enough, now in the middle of winter,

And the flies stuck between the windows sprang back to life.

Eventually we come back

And utter words that leave people bewildered,

But it’s worth telling

The incredible story

Of our presence here

And we made the silverware clink gently,

For the power that made us look into mirrors

As she walked away,

Stealing a resigned smile from my lips,

In the middle of the chaos, the violence

that turns everything upside down,

In quiet corners,

Where you dream of a peaceful life, with your family, in your old age,

When your brain would have captured golden, crazy images.

Death waits for as long as it takes,

But there are things you find difficult to part with,

And you cry, you weep, you grieve, you throw tantrums,

You go into hiding in a sanatorium

Taking with you the reflection in the fountain of your grandiose fate.

I see objects, a pendant, a burnt pipe, insufferable papers,

Manuscripts, crypts, reminding me of her words

When she was upset about the hardship in our beloved little country,

That politicians should visit the morgue each day,

To see for themselves how short life is

And how quickly everything goes to hell.

I know the feeling of emptiness, making its way up to thethroat

And choking me, I always knew one day this would happen.

I lived my youth as if in a complicated French movie.

If I could honestly cry

Maybe that suffering could make me see the truth.

I think about mother, about my childhood, scattered

In drawers full of photos.

Those days followed Ramesses the Great,

Countess Walewska and Cortés in the sky.

I think it’s pleasant to be dead for a long time,

But, fed up with heroic songs, I hear the freight train

That sounds like blood pounding in my ear drums.

Were you the one leaving little presents

on my nightstand?

I didn’t know how to rise to the occasion,

And this morning finds me with my head resting on the table,

My head, a head bobbing on the edge of the stretcher...

But what am I saying? I’m sad and I try to forget that I suffered

Some tiresome illness.

In the end I could go mad

Across the mountains and plains of my country.

I don’t come back, this is my space, the grass is growing,

It’s spring, the spring is truly here,

And my frolicking heart Leaves me behind,

Barely catching my breath, panting.

 

 

THE PHARMACISTS AT THE SANATORIUM  

 

The pharmacists took the tables and registers outside, in the park,

and there I went to talk to them.

They were complaining of being isolated, without their friends,

while carefully placing carbon paper between paper sheets, counting pills.

They were talking on the phone they brought with them from the lobby,

where they had to run to answer it, when it was ringing,

clacking the slippers they were wearing at work.

They asked me if I still wrote poetry

and, smiling suggestively, if I had a girlfriend.

The balconies were alive with the rattling sound of dice

and the cough vibrated through the song of the chatty birds

that thrivedat that altitude.

 

 

ONLY THE ENDLESS CONFUSION

 

Only the endless confusion brought us always

to a shore

with loud gulls, that predisposed us towards

some kind of primeval poem,

yet carrying a breath of humanity

that we once lost,

bitter and without hope, fierce and aloof,

snapping savagely at these whining children

asking us for something.

Only those resplendent sun-filled days

bring warmth into my heart,

I am almost broken, knocked to the ground and trampled,

wiping the blood from my nose with the sleeve

of my overcoat.

Only defeated and carried away by tepid illusions,

with a coy smile, to ward off compassion

or altruistic offers

that do more harm than good,

as all sorts of philanthropic gestures do

when they reveal their sordid facades.

Only by writing and writing and reading

I managed to ruin my entire life.

I realize, in amazement, that we, disenchanted,

still recognize little signs

and submit to this force born under dark auspices,

we resign ourselves and – if we sometimes erupt angry words –

we live an anemic, pale, yellow life,

overwhelmed by the freckled wind of these difficult times.

Only devoted to death and disease,

only cunningly hiding in shelters

where we spend half of our life,

dozing and chatting,

we abandon brutal insults, heavy

like snow on pine needles,

a dream shattered with the first breath of sun,

or with the frightened jump of a horned animal.

I cannot save myself,

and I will never be able to suppress a sob

that engulfs me,

a tearless sob, as I walk among you,

and I will never be enlightened

for the rest of the days left to live.

 

 

-------------------

Bibliography

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Bullock,  O.  (2019). Cristina Savin on Vasile Baghiu’s poetic chimerism.  Poetry  in  Process. Retrieved    from    https://poetry-in-process.com/2019/11/23/cristina-savin-on-vasile-baghius-poetic-chimerism/.

Bush, P. (2013). Memory, War and Translation. Mercè Rodoreda’s In Diamond Square. In B. Nelson & B. Maher (Eds.), Perspectives on Literature and Translation: Creation, Circulation, Reception (pp. 31-46). Taylor & Francis Group.

Wilson,  R.  &  Gerber,  L.  (Eds.).  (2012). Creative Constraints: Translation and Authorship. Monash University Publishing.

Cristina Savin is  a  freelance  translator  based  in  Melbourne,  Australia.  She  is  the  French-to-English  translator  of  Marie  Lion  and philosopher  Marcel  Gauchet.  Her  translations  from Romanian have been published in Cordite Poetry Review, The AALITRA Review, Poetry in Process and Bordertown. Cristina is an assistant editor at The AALITRA Review and is currently undertaking a PhD in Translation Studies at Monash University.