in my childhood (poem by Florin Caragiu, English translation: Simona Sumanaru)

I used to be a sickly child,
yet I loved to play to exhaustion

I would leave home heading for the meeting place
with a guilty feeling like a shell
cracked by my fast pace and my panting

I was usually late and the teams were already set up
I would fidget outside the field until
someone would call me eventually; then I could not withhold
an awkwardly broad smile

I would run the most of all
rinsing out my T-shirt in several waters
and although I would rarely receive a pass
when that happened suddenly there was a void around me

I would dribble into poetic forms
the shadows that multiplied around me
until the ball deserted me like a word
uttered in your sleep

often enough right in front of the goal
I would lose my motivation to strike the ball
although a few times I gave up looking for one
and the ball flew up to the spider
but I could pull this trick only in the rare moments
when I remembered to look at the sky
through the green of the trees

when I returned home it was already dark
I was soaking-wet again, feverish, aching all over,
alone, and vulnerable

but I would encourage myself
that if I made it out alive this time as well
I would never play
again


(poem published in the volume "catacombe. aici totul e viu" ("catacombs. everything is alive here"), Vinea Publishing House, Bucharest, 2008, pp. 72-73. English translation: Simona Sumanaru.)