breakdown (poem by Florin Caragiu, English translation: Simona Sumanaru)

you’re beautiful when you smile
although you only do it in your moments of sadness
when you catch me trying to cheer you up

I could never tell you how you look
what exactly changes in time
and what stays the same irrespective of your mood
maybe because when I do that
your shadow breaks down into my words

every time we meet I get the feeling
I have my arms full, even when I forget to get you
a little gift
you come into my embrace to receive
what I brought you without knowing

sometimes you bandage up my soul
with your colorful sleeve
like first aid
against my inward falls

other times we are two arms
spread out to be able to hold

when we are far from each other
we become almost translucent
and people no longer greet us back
looking through us at their own lives
abandoned on the edge of a child’s footstep


(poem published in the volume "catacombe. aici totul e viu" ("catacombs. everything is alive here"), Vinea Publishing House, Bucharest, 2008, pp. 49-50. English translation: Simona Sumanaru.)

loveblind (poem by Florin Caragiu, English translation: Simona Sumanaru)

the world is a film over the eyes
before long the scalpel will cut it
seeing will be as hard as a getaway
from the body hachured over the heart

once upon a time there was a hand clap
near the stone behind which we were spying on the sunrise
your shadow sliding over me
melts the cry of a seagull
between the fingers wandering through the sand
next to us the deserted arcades get gilded
and the sky scatters around
tiny pieces of our lives

we knew from the start we’d go loveblind for a while
we are too much alike to be able to touch

a story you always run through
from the middle to the end like reading the face of a child
asleep in his mother’s arms

(poem published in the volume "catacombe. aici totul e viu" ("catacombs. everything is alive here"), Vinea Publishing House, Bucharest, 2008, p. 48. English translation: Simona Sumanaru.)

the picture box (poem by Florin Caragiu, English translation: Simona Sumanaru)

all my life I’ve been meaning to learn
how the soul becomes body and the body becomes soul
without ever ceasing to be what they are

then we could wander one inside the other like in a garden
one breath apart
I like to watch you sleeping
see you eyelids crease up from the dreams in the picture box
and your skin getting thinner under God’s caress
in the chill of the morning

sometimes you cry in your sleep with the pain of a melted stone
that squeezes my heart into the corner of my eyes
other times you uncover yourself of night with a smile
caught in a gesture
from which light pours over things

your sadness lays on words
a web in which the sun weaves its rays

upon awakening
loneliness is a baby crib

(poem published in the volume "catacombe. aici totul e viu" ("catacombs. everything is alive here"), Vinea Publishing House, Bucharest, 2008, p. 47. English translation: Simona Sumanaru.)

something happens (poem by Florin Caragiu, English translation: Simona Sumanaru)

The Icon of Saints of the Prison from Aiud



















(for the martyrs of the communist prisons)

motto:
"another cubit of life poured out
another palm long the body shrivelled"
elias loennrot, kalevala


we hear ourselves crack like a nut in the nutcracker
something happens on the upper plank-bed when shoulderless and tearless
living dead in a lime pit
we kiss in awe
the only thought
written in splinters under the corner of an eyelid

porridge and freedom sip from the bottom of the platter
a supplement from the love ratio,
a boot tip throw us on the corridor
dancing upon the suffering in the shirt
signed with blank policies

with a distant sound
the blows ask us who we are
until our trunks detach from our heads
and the shapes appear reversed like trees in water

we don’t have the teeth to crush the snake that crawls into our mouths
we can’t lift the sky to our lips like we do a milk bowl

locked in one last confession
with eyes almost closed and the head tilted to the left
we find ourselves hanging by a thread
revealed by the rhythmic movement of the lips

suddenly the windows are slammed shut
the flesh tenderizes under the blows
big winged angels struggle to get in
but they can’t pass through the glass and saddened
they watch us in the semi-dark
until the windows turn black

where to run when the night
pulls us out from the crust of sin
and unhesitatingly counts the falls,
when the angel of God gets us out into the light
not through the prison gates,
but through the breath of the martyr
lying face-up
on the wet concrete floor


(poem inspired by Virgil Maxim’s accounts,
Hymn for the Cross They Bore, 2 vol., Gordian Publishing House, Timişoara, 1997)


(poem published in the volume "catacombe. aici totul e viu" ("catacombs. everything is alive here"), Vinea Publishing House, Bucharest, 2008, pp. 45-46. English translation: Simona Sumanaru.)

so easily (poem by Florin Caragiu, English translation: Simona Sumanaru)

photo: Diana Popescu














your finger skin chaps from cold so easily
sometimes you shake with fear and tell me you see farther out
your eyes are arrows emerging from lakes
towards birds that haven’t learned how to escape

wild beasts gather around your song
and forget to weep dreaming of your refreshing hands

after the rain we often wander through the woods
beyond which only the blue mountains dare to go
you know how to pick the good mushrooms, I eat them from afar
like miracles that show at the end of the wish
when it touches the sky

we stretch out our arms with eyes closed
and suddenly a clearing sprinkles us:
you laugh and all things clap their hands

we lay our blanket on the ground and abandon ourselves
to the silence with a pungent fir-tree scent
we fall asleep hand in hand, escaladed by ants

one time a storm caught us and we ran
until we clothed ourselves in rain underneath
that’s when we lost our fear of water

colors sneak into your eyes
to wash off the night

The Lord makes our steps sway ever so softly,
come by the crossroads, He’s awaiting us, He will cut our path
like a golden lock of solitude.


(poem published in the volume "catacombe. aici totul e viu" ("catacombs. everything is alive here"), Vinea Publishing House, Bucharest, 2008, pp. 43-44. English translation: Simona Sumanaru.)

the only eye (poems by Florin Caragiu, English translation: Simona Sumanaru)

photo: Diana Popescu














1. tourniquet

"where there is great fear, the man is small"
R. W. Fassbinder


The child watches us,
his gaze is the crack we pass through
when we burst into tears.

Live your life – what a horrifying cliché sometimes,
luxury walking cane propped without hesitation
into the soft core of what you bear

when fear made into a tourniquet
prevents the soul from exiting through the skin
bitten by the white cry.

Death tears up the thin peels of the thought
coiled around the water-carried trunks
and upturns our earth bucket.

A blood stain is the lens through which
the sky gathers in one point
so that the heart could start burning for the forsaken one.


2. loops

sometimes we throw ourselves so deeply into each other
that only Christ could pull us out alive

We wait for Him with bruised joints
smeared with colored clay

the sun loops in the milky fog
the street winds its entrances

people wonder at
our death exercises

and throw clouds at us
from the unaccomplished end of the dream


3. the only eye

"God did not come to release us from our suffering,
nor to explain it, but to fill it with His presence"
Paul Claudel


When God created the world, He wept
foreseeing all the future rises and falls.

The days when we abandon our bodies
to the hungry eagles, outside the heart,

when our soul betrays its only true eye
and life becomes a house regarded from outside in.

God needs but a tiny piece of us
to bestow upon freedom the harshness of wine,

He turns our wanderings into loops
that return our misplaced wishes into the light-pierced air.


(poems published in the volume "catacombe. aici totul e viu" ("catacombs. everything is alive here"), Vinea Publishing House, Bucharest, 2008, pp. 40-41. English translation: Simona Sumanaru.)

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

photo: Diana Popescu














1. wasteland

We pick the night from the blooming wasteland,
the ground makes itself a ring out of our arms,
we lean our eyelids against the silence corner
thrilled like a child discovering a secure hiding place.

Tears drop on the inside melting the wakefulness,
we fold up the clouds and hide them inside Siamese hearts,
joined together in Christ we sneak into each other
as into a swing over lightened sorrows.

Under closed eyes the thought detaches
like a leprosy-eaten limb or like a translucent leaf.


2. earthquake

Buildings sway like thin trees
under the hands of a child longing for the fruits
from the top, I get up wearily,
close my eyes, open them up again, it’s not a dream:

silhouettes are running around, stumbling upon each other
and the rug under which
the damp past crams.

Death gathers worries off the thresholds,
the ongoing chase to discover something new:
hanging by the little tail of hope, the earth trembles deep within;
in the birth throes
it calls for the light caught in the rubble.


3. the courier

The blind bird burst through the glass eye,
heavy with the sweat of mute shadows,
it consciously broke it into thousands of pieces
with the hieroglyphs of its translucent plumage.

Like an arrow it pierced through the palms of the dreams
and all things moaned from all that whiteness
calling for eyelids of words.

The bird was suddenly full of eyes
and trilled in delight,
melting into the blue her rounded kiss.

Arms stretched out to catch
if only a feather of the runaway, but it pecked at them
till they bled, to the bone, releasing into the veins
the lost love’s letter.

(poems published in the volume "catacombe. aici totul e viu" ("catacombs. everything is alive here"), Vinea Publishing House, Bucharest, 2008, pp. 38-39. English translation: Simona Sumanaru.)

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

1. cracks

you sit and wait for the tumor to grow
they’ll cut off your lower lip and you’ll forget how to taste
an apple, a slice of bread, or just the water in which
you drown your worries after you forget to fall asleep

one thing is certain: the walls between rooms must come down
the cracks have grown living things

beauty eats into your body
and dogs come out through the passageway to lick you
they crawl under the fence as if flying
shaken up by a dream that’s not theirs, clung to you -
a flag fluttering in the twilight

the lost strength surrounds the disease like a prey
always drawn farther away
until it soaks in tears

solitude is the wound you slide into
faultless scalpel towards a love
half-crushed by the chaotically grown flesh


2. tsunami

your eyes remained open
in between two flashes of light
you never know when you get hurt more beautifully
when a soul enters you
like a grenade thrown from the trenches

point of return
for the discontinuous line of the body
wrapped up in forgiveness on the sidewalk

the harlot who feels love
for the very first time

her hands glued to her aching hair
a dull pain
cut off for an instant

a body of water suddenly displaced and

you’re ready to go carrying nothing
all that seemed steady moves with your lips


3. the moon chews on your shoulders

when you weep in the distance
the moon chews on your shoulders
you slowly start to forget the remains of the night
outside the dreams

there is no more water

blindness is a softly hummed
love song
when the knees fall asleep
next to the breasts a wish harsher

I buried half the world
into one word, which I laid next to the dried-up
cherry tree

all this despair blooming in your hair
will find me at dawn
swimming in the translucent ground

(poems published in the volume "catacombe. aici totul e viu" ("catacombs. everything is alive here"), Vinea Publishing House, Bucharest, 2008, pp. 35-37. English translation: Simona Sumanaru.)

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

Roma, Catacombe dei Ss. Marcellino e Pietro - Giona rigettato









1. the cloak

Motto:
We have played the flute for you and you would not dance;
we have sung you dirges and you would not weep.
Luke 7:32, Matthew 11:17)

you have played the flute for me and I would not dance
I have plundered territories with my teeth clenched without sensing
the departure signal:
a fear of light throbbing inside my stiff body
the voice of things that don’t belong to me
and the circle in which a gold chain
tightens around my restlessness

you have sung me dirges and I would not weep
soaked in the crazily bent pleasure
down to the blind bone in the ruins:

an army pierced in its left flank
under the suddenly interrupted spin
of faces around the white bed

the cloak under which a flame cleans up my name
remains the desert in which the only possible way
is the feeling of being held by the hand

and so my breath will last for as long as I pay forward


2. confession

motto:
"here lies a man who could not become god"
G. Papini, "A Finished Man")

from dawn till dusk
one can reach holiness

yet most often I get to do
what seems strangely easy -
I regard God as superfluous
and look for Him only when I need to
knowing He will always take me back

and so the days go by
like the sea embracing a drowned man

the gaze produces the illusion
that entraps the years with no escape

blood no longer transfers into words

the experience of what is impossible to reach
without changing
is the only one I go without
although without it all the rest fade

and the game’s growing insecurity
starts to resemble
the fear of love


3. catacombs

everything is alive here

upon your chest I laid the sun
we’ll share tonight
outside the uniforms move on their own
vacant stones
dig wells into bodies
our song will encircle time
split up into breaths

at dawn all walls
will crack in wonder

Jesus’ name is the artery through which
light returns to this tired heart
called earth

(poems published in the volume "catacombe. aici totul e viu" ("catacombs. everything is alive here"), Vinea Publishing House, Bucharest, 2008, pp. 32-34. English translation: Simona Sumanaru.)

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.)