Magda Carneci
(PEN Romania)
POLITICAL QUINTET
WE’LL ABANDON THIS HOUSE
We’ll abandon this house of filth
where no one wipes his shoes anymore
where no one’s going to dust anymore
where no one has swept since a long time ago
where no one puts out the garbage anymore
we’ll abandon this house of misery
this dank house of mildew and stench
this house swarming with mosquitoes and cockroaches
this house teeming with mice, snakes, rats
we’ll abandon this house of plague
where every day a gunshot is heard
where a corpse lies in every room
where piles of skeletons are hidden in the cellar
where ghosts and great-grandchildren haunt the attic
we’ll abandon this house of madness
where we’ve been beaten and preached at
where we’ve been starved and maddened with thirst
where we were broken and taught to obey
where we conformed, where we were taught our tricks
this lodging of slag, this worn-out shoebox, this cattle pen
this glossy lunatic asylum, this city-block of prefab concrete apartments
crumbling in hate, this gaily decorated coffin
this house without furniture or carpets
this house without windows and doors
this house without walls, without entrance, without roof
this house without ground, without foundation
from which, dangling, our legs kick in the air, free.
LIBERTY
What will you do with liberty?
skeptical ravens squawk in parks
discredited statues mutter disapprovingly in suburbs
What will you do, what will you do? old pensioners
bark in agony waving miniature flags, young housewives
scream hysterically waving handbags and children
What will you do with liberty?
the Ecclesiast murmurs astride the Sphinx
What? a distressed Dostoevsky whispers from
his coach-and-four
What? politicians and presidents grunt
Yes, what is it we’ll do?
we awake alone dead center in the square,
no one’s around, everyone’s gone, the loudspeakers
rant in vain, streams of blood are flowing to the gutters
our legs, our hands, our eyes tremble
we’re cold, we’re hungry, we’re about to cry
We were just on the verge of writing new hymns together
we were just on the verge of speaking the language of the birds
we were just on the verge of glowing with a blue light like angels
we were just on the verge of burning joyfully on a pyre
keeping a sharp eye on the blue-grey horizon
for the coming last daybreak of the world.
STILL LIFE WITH PAIL
A grey battered pail on a grey pedestal in a grey art museum
Oh, good-for-nothing sculpture,
cheap and sad monument to the proletarian world,
there on the grayish pedestal
everlasting in your corroded zinc, but lacking posterity
people walk round and round you in alarm,
grudgingly admire you, sanctify you with despair, but
a pail raised aloft on a pedestal – is it something else
or just a grey kitchen bucket?
cheers, acclaims, a thirst for worship
in a world getting staler and staler
dizzily drawing near zinc, near horror
I’d like to worship you, o proletarian world, o gallery pail,
to prostrate myself
before your sacred body, your kitchen essence,
breathlessly I’d have swallowed your handles, your bolts, your suds
I’d have nourished myself with theses, antitheses, and proclamations
to the point of self-oblivion
in order that I might take hold of the future in which
you would become as symbolic as the grail,
in order that I might believe in you,
love you, honor you,
save myself and be One with you.
MANIFESTO
Now it’s all right.
Now we’re free.
Now we have something to eat and to drink.
Now nobody steps on our toes.
Now we may gorge ourselves on mountains of stuffed cabbage
and grilled garlic sausages.
Now we may drink casks and casks of plum brandy.
Now we may pick flowers and step on the grass.
Now we may throw paper wrappers and fruit peels on the ground.
Now we may drive our cars on red.
Now nobody steps on our toes.
Now we may produce nothing.
Now we may speak of all the buffoons.
Now we may run away from home.
Now we may strike our parents.
Now we may think nothing at all.
Now we’re free.
Now there’s nobody to demand anything of us.
Now there’s nobody to tell us what to do.
Now nobody gives us dogma and dicta.
Now nobody guides us, nobody guards us.
Now nobody reprimands us, nobody praises us.
Now nobody wants to be mother and father.
Now they don’t need us anymore.
Now nobody needs us anymore.
Now our radiant future is no more.
Now our glorious past is no more.
Now we’re no longer heroic.
Now we’re no longer revolutionary.
Now we’re no longer the dictatorship of the people.
Now we’re no longer anything else.
Now we’re free.
Now we’re nothing.
Now nothing, never, nobody, no more, no matter, no need.
Mother, are you watching over me? Father, are you listening?
Brothers, where are we? Where did they bulldoze us, where lead us?
Comrades, nothing’s clear anymore. Turn the lights on!
Fellow people, take up arms – to the struggle, to the struggle!
Dear friends, let’s be kind, let’s be meek as lambs!
Gentlemen, let’s think, reflect, understand!
Citizens, let’s be united, all together to the ballot box!
Uncle John, let ’em have it!
Aunt Ileana, beat out the time!
Come, people of the nation! All forward! Hurrah!
AES EXILUM MUNDI
The poet strides forth from his tomb in a red toga in order to sing
in the cold morning, flies swarm with flocks of white pigeons
over the fresh corpses of the last revolution
he sees the square empty and the gutters flowing with blood
he sees crowds of children running away and bands of angels descending
he sees the words liberty equality et cetera
retracting their claws under their feathers and taking flight into the dark
he sees the flayed faces of the past and the future, he sees a funnel
a huge rusty funnel drawing in all, all
sucking in all, annihilating all, and inquiring lackadaisically:
is there any purpose?
he sees a superman movie projected on the walls nonstop
where among fires man exits the wings
that very same man, covered with fur and photoelectric cells, in gold chains
and cradling a stillborn mutant baby in his arms
the poet dances upon the ruins, alone
the poet chants psalms for savages and beasts
the poet prays over the gold and the blood
the poet asks where are the new temples
the poet recites his poems to corpses
the poet devours his own body
the poet transforms himself into words.
translated by
Adam J. Sorkin with the poet