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Who suspects nothing whatsoever

 

one takes whichever dream

 at random / to those

 who are wide awake we recommend to select the one

 out of whose arms they have just escaped / one selects

 a character out of it / one

who is fearful by nature

or someone who has fallen out of line / anyway someone

                                                                                    who suspects nothing whatsoever

that there is anything the matter with him / on behalf of

and on account of his deeds

 one then proceeds to take the whole dream to task

 poking fun at it

 cross examining it

 applying pressure on it

mixing it thoroughly with all of one's failures

 decorating it with a little bit of regret

 while putting up some show of desperation

 seasoning it to taste and in keeping with one's expertise and serving it

 according to circumstances

 in  bedroom slippers or in hobnailed boots

 if the result is the one envisaged the whole procedure is followed through all over again

 if not the whole procedure is followed through all over again

 after some time

 everybody yourself included

 will come to believe

 that this is it

 this was

 this will be

 anyway the facts have long been wolfed down

 as royalties for this have melted into thin air

                        

                                Ludwigsburg, January 2002

From the volume Ochiul Boului (The Eye of the Ox), Marineasa Publishers, Timisoara, 2002

Translated from the Rumanian  by Heathrow O'Hare

 

 

T o    w h o m e v e r    m i g h t    a s k

 

the singers did not sing

the teachers did not preach

the students did not do their homework

the writers did not write

the artists did not paint

the military did not militate

the activists did not take action

the zealots did not try hard enough

the slothful did not idle their time away

the terrorists did not spread terror

the others (how

should one call them?)

not finding something outstanding to do

hit themselves hard with a truncheon across their skulls

or maybe they handcuffed themselves and got into

the police vans whoever

could not find room in there caught a bullet

in the leg or in the chest or in the head it did not matter where

just for the sake

of providing sensational stuff

to whomever

may ask

 

                         Cannes, June 1998

From the volume Putere Absoluta (Absolute Power), Marineasa Publishers, Timisoara, 1999

Translated from the Romanian by  HEATHROW  O'HARE

 

Excruciating pain

 

at the end of each day the game looks more interesting

yesterday I made myself a shirt out of the adhesive wallpaper in the guest room

through the wound in one wall I'm peering inside the night's belly

the only sight granted to me is a stone table on which a deathlike figure

big with child lies waiting for the obstetrician's decree

here's a handsome stalwart fellow the latter mumbles

while carefully examining the blunt instrument which the yet unborn

has been aiming at the stethoscope's

hardened auscultation cup

 

                                Ludwigsburg, March 2001

From the volume Ochiul Boului (The Eye of the Ox), Marineasa Publishers, Timisoara, 2002

Translated from the Rumanian by Heathrow O'Hare

 

 

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