LUCIAN BLAGA

Melancholy

The stray wind wipes its cold tears

on my window.

It’s raining.

Hazy sadness overcomes me, but all

the pain I feel,

I don’t feel it inside

in my heart

or in my chest,

I feel it in the drops of rain.

And grafted on my being the colossal world

with all its autumn and the evening

hurts me like a wound.

Above the mount clouds with heavy udders hover.

And it’s pouring.

 

 

Pan’s Death

III The Shadow

Pan plucks honey

in the shade of a walnut tree.

 

He’s sad:

monasteries multiply in the woods,

and he’s upset by the glimmer of the cross.

 

Martins fly around him

and elm leaves

softly chime.

Under the vesper bells Pan’s sad.

On the strait path walks the moonlight colored

shadow

of Christ.

 

 

The Dog of Pompeii

Had seen in Pompeii that Roman dog.

Contrived by the goddess of fate –

molded in the stuff of death,

never to rot in tempest or wear.

 

He’d tried to escape the cloud from the door,

during the burning night fallen from high.

Yet, with a twist and a sneer,

The dog biting the ash expired.

 

I see you my God – ash, lead and cloud –

coming above me like storm,

from the mountain of flame, invading it all.

 

I’ll make it to the door. Then

I’ll taste in You the ash of the world.

I’ll keep Your pattern for ages.

 

 

Beginnings

When each of our blood cells

becomes a heart,

we’re ill.

But only love tries us this way.

My blood – a sea without earth.

I’m faceless

Arise above me.

Hover over my lands,

like the lonesome spirit

above primordial water.

 

 

Moonlight Sonata

Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata

is moon coming down on earth.

So we might think, so we might say:

moon passing through the woods

through lilies and blue dew

conceiving from bitter light

and sweat wind

Ophelia, Margaret, Beatrice.

You’re one of the them yourself

a fragment from the Sonata

that was never played.

 

 

De profundis

One more year, one day, one hour –

and beneath my feet

all roads shall vanish.

One more year, one dream, one slumber –

and all my resting bones

shall hail me as a prince below the ground.

 

Traducere de Ştefan Bolea