between us it’s already dawn (poems by Florin Caragiu, English translation: Simona Sumanaru)

(photo: Diana Popescu)

1. genesis

sometimes I have no news from you
but I know our ages get ahead by a shortcut
then wait for us to catch up without looking back

people step out into the streets to find out their names
their garments shout so loudly
that they can’t hear each other
and their souls return to their chest pockets

you know I love you and the drinking bowl we share suffices:
even though it breaks into tiny pieces
water never shatters, but remains to wrap around the memory

words haven’t learned to speak,
they tug at our sleeve to draw near to the place
where time ends
as movement can’t be decomposed any further

the gates are locked
and the scream swings beneath a tongue of fire;
don’t be afraid now

God wants to be our child


2. between us it’s already dawn

my arm goes numb under your body I breathe softly
in the dim light like a compress

on last night’s table there are crumbs of life

you cry in your sleep with your back arched
as if you tried to make room for Someone else in between us

I slowly turn to see an angel
giving you to God... I want to wake you up
but silence has nested in my palms
and even though the skies begin to fill up with freckles

between us it’s already dawn


3. big crunch

when God passes by people hide
inside your heart not to go blind

a different kind of garments grow from their flesh

at the end of sight new land is born
I don’t even know when we made room one inside the other

our superposed edges warm up the grass
in which a child wipes clouds off his cheek

sometimes I have no particular thing to tell you

words cling to the light ball
that rolls faster and faster towards us

(poems published in the volume "catacombe. aici totul e viu" ("catacombs. everything is alive here"), Vinea Publishing House, Bucharest, 2008, pp. 29-31. English translation: Simona Sumanaru.)

conjunctions (poems by Florin Caragiu, English translation: Simona Sumanaru)

1. remember

I sit alone in one corner of the big cold hall,
a wing entangled in the web of a moan with thin dreams.

Words lit into the steam of palms covering the mouth
slide onto the half-shadowed, slightly unglued poster,
then turn towards me with the certainty of a blind man
climbing up the massive echo in flick-flacks. The dawn snoozing on ropes
hides in its tiny wooden fists the water between goblets.

The steps towards you have become longer
since the sky hid among our traces.


2. head of a child

all that happens has a sharpness to it: the stones, the night, and especially the thread stuck into the unbuttoned wounds like an old coat you can’t let go of
even when it starts to crowd in on your shadow

you playfully tear my buttons up, depose them into my palm when you leave;
I throw them back, you catch them
and hang them on the little solitary Christmas tree

hand in hand we step out into the cold beneath nests with snowy eyelashes
you are one letter ahead, our secret signal
until the world flutters in between us like the head of a child


3. syzygy

there is no alibi in the eyes of a mute child/ beauty is silent/
the amber hidden inside the gap between soul and body aches
when the triangular sun tugs at the edges of our beings

we stand in line for two changes of clothes
from which we erupt from time to time/ towards those who touchlessly cross our prayer. we lean on light.

we are here/ right here/ right here/ at the threshold/ surrounding our circumsized death/
humbly waiting. that’s all. beyond shares there are only the image
and the standing face-to-face. all we left behind heals from us.

(poems published in the volume "catacombe. aici totul e viu" ("catacombs. everything is alive here"), Vinea Publishing House, Bucharest, 2008, pp. 27-28. English translation: Simona Sumanaru.)

the unsewn shirt (poems by Florin Caragiu, English translation: Simona Sumanaru)

(photo: Diana Popescu)


1. without the cross...

moto:
’All things need to be understood
after the cross and the resurrection’
St. Maximus the Confessor

Without the cross, the world hangs from our necks
like a scaffold, Yes and No are
screechings of scissors through the paper of senses
and the body, a coin pouch in which
a starved star is rattling. The embrace is only a wound,
a fall into the gap between atoms, outer layer
under which death cannot perish
and two no longer become one.

Without the cross, words go blind and the chase
is an ongoing wait by the door,
when no one comes to entrust their soul into your palms.

Without the cross, gold turns to dust
and wine to vinegar on our lips,
while ecstasy bursts like a pricked balloon.


2. the sword-eaters

We seek each other like the arms of the cross,
the word pinned to our lips
descends – plunging wing
lifelessly touching the empty page.
Who will overturn the letter for us at dawn?...

We grope for light
like saplings ascending into the thicket,
we swallow the distance that draws us near
like a blooming edge.


3. the descent into hell

taken with the magic of nothingness we swallowed death
and dissolved into our own shadow
we can no longer fill in with our bodies
the distance between eyes and heart

the dark shivers when we look at each other
through Jesus’ transparent wounds
which we scraped not knowing why
and woke up outside of ourselves

with motionless hands we await
the touch that clothes us on the inside
in the unsewn shirt

(poems published in the volume "catacombe. aici totul e viu" ("catacombs. everything is alive here"), Vinea Publishing House, Bucharest, 2008, pp. 25-26. English translation: Simona Sumanaru.)

conquered scenery (poems by Florin Caragiu, English translation: Simona Sumanaru)

(photo: Diana Popescu)

1. the castle

Surrounded by ditches, with embattled walls and war machines,
the castle unimpugnably rises beneath the sharp cry of the seagull:
the shadow of a child bursting into tears, his cheek wiped by the wind
and the greenish foamy hand tracelessly carrying this sand –
all that’s left is a fistful
too weak to close when our bare feet light up the colors of twilight.

I laid the light in your palms as if it were a baby swallow
that fell from the nest, heart pounding and shaking under your caresses.
It won’t eat, it longs for the blue nest...

the sun flies nearby with maternal restlessness.


2. the storm

The sandstorm looks for me in your arms at sunset,
twisted in non-white like a page with a burning corner.
Out of breath we bury the light inside fir-tree needles.

Sometimes a nearby shadow, abandoned between sawdust lips,
sighs for the hand that has detached its wings.

We playfully untwist our traces, hide inside tree caves
until the branches raise towards the sky and the echo bounces back,
hitting the water like a wounded hind.


3. in Nichita’s style

I don’t know how you took a corner of me when you left
you looked at me, yet there was nothing you could do

your feet had outrun you and your arms
had come off your shoulders towards the white angel

the world had cracked like an eggshell, words were running away
and God’s look was pouring over us

(poems published in the volume "catacombe. aici totul e viu" ("catacombs. everything is alive here"), Vinea Publishing House, Bucharest, 2008, pp. 23-24. English translation: Simona Sumanaru.)

ghetto (poems by Florin Caragiu, English translation: Simona Sumanaru)

1. outcast

echolessly your gesture strikes
the echoless padded gazes
nobody comes to the parlor
the ice-breakers can’t reach
into the arctic silence
under the public eye’s cataract
the skis slide without a trace
no word is crossed
the questioning tear freezes up
slowly dropping out
falling into an echoless sleep

2. asylum

Peacocks blink when you smile,
with night-filled arms you touch
the word that grew between us
rocking the unleavening moment with a song,
you are so good at escaping into a tear.

Swallows have nested in your right hand,
yet you keep on cleaning up the air that knelt down;
never forgetting to lasso the fire rabbit,
you fit sleeplessness into prayer.

You crush the semi-dark between your palms
and wear its perfume at the itinerant asylum
where the first snow crams innocent beasts;
with every reverence you dig out of the rubble
love’s grassy iris.


3. phthisis

it’s getting harder and harder
to climb up the stairs
with a sad smile
you cover up the twinge in your chest
the dream room floods
logs from a forgotten language
float between us
the mud spreads
all words fit onto a paper blowing with the wind
there is no stone left
upon which to lay our heads
we’ll let them slowly drop towards our chests
and we will rest from so much forgetfulness
it’s too late to escape into a poem
too late to sneak a peak at each other
from the mirror of things

(poems published in the volume "catacombe. aici totul e viu" ("catacombs. everything is alive here"), Vinea Publishing House, Bucharest, 2008, pp. 21-22. English translation: Simona Sumanaru.)

broken glass (poems by Florin Caragiu, English translation: Simona Sumanaru)

(photo: Diana Popescu)


1. broken glass

When there are no saints in handy, God works through broken glass:
he picks it up from the dirt, contemplates the mud mixed with grass,
gently removes it, and cleans it up with his silence-wetted hands
until a sparkle appears that mirrors his face.

Then, with one firm move accelerated into thousands of things and beings,
he bends it. Towards evening, he approaches carrying your eyes in his palms,
while you delicately sing out of tune at your window; a flower pot briefly touches
a sleeve pleat, overturns, breaks, and the flowers fall asleep on the windowsill.

Words hop on the keyboard, life resembles a leaf
with which the wind adorned your snow-touched hair and the road,
a tongue engulfed into the throat of mystery. When there are no saints in handy,
God sets up a fire from dry leaves around which
all beings gather to warm up their trembling hands.


2. the child

Sometimes God sneaks in between us like a child
which the grown-ups, wrapped up in worries, don’t even notice.

He touches our faces painted in colors of war with the intangible smile
of the most unprotected being which, with disarming faith,
makes us forget even for a moment
time piercing deeper through our flesh with every struggle.

He nears in full trust, putting our shadow to sleep
in his swallow-encircled palms. From time to time,
his silence pours over us like a water carrying away the gravestones
when, with an arched gesture, we pull him closer to our hearts.

Then we dream with open eyes and see ourselves
all the way from the end of the road, sheltered by a sigh
deeper than the lights scattered over the black-greenish land.


3. entanglement

the game takes us among lasers and mirrors
towards the thrusting-place on the shadowed half of time

the child’s gaze curves up the space, scatters its colors
onto the rag with which he gathered the coolness of grass at dawn

my song pierces through your shoulder, your tear throbs in my sternum,
all beings abandon their red circle in the shivering of their voice

water falling through the twig basket is a pleasant pain
in a story that can no longer depict us separately

the skin is now the raw meat of the body peeled off of light,
the bleeding of limits when the freshly deserted steps fade out

the only thing that’s left is the blind jump towards God’s humbleness.


(poems published in the volume "catacombe. aici totul e viu" ("catacombs. everything is alive here"), Vinea Publishing House, Bucharest, 2008, pp. 18-20. English translation: Simona Sumanaru.)