Story

by Marin Sorescu, 1966


Your soul works with wood,
And mine with electricity.
Your love fills the sky with fumes,
Mine has a flame's purity

Still we shall walk together
A good piece of Earth,
A good piece of Moon,
A good piece of forever.

We'll be happy for the grass
And for the lake,
We'll laugh for the trees,
Praise the straight road with a kiss
And hold a moment of silence
For every turn that we missed.

We'll go by my shadow
That always moves forward,
We'll go by the first thought,
We'll go by two or three words.

Until
Holy Friday will come our way
To tell us among other things
That we are not that young anyways

And she will no longer provide
wood for the fumes
or electricity for the flame.

The Actors

by Marin Sorescu

The most daring - the actors!
With their sleeves rolled up
They really know how to live (for) us!
Never seen a more perfect kiss
Like of the actors in the third act,
When sentiments start to clarify

Their death on the scene is so natural,
That compared to its perfection,
Those in graveyards,
The real dead,
Tragically, forever dead,
They seem to move!

And us, still in our only life!
Not even this one know how to live.
Talking small or being silent for years,
Embarrassed and unaesthetic,
And (we) don't know where the hell to keep our hands.

If I’m Not Asking Too Much

By Marin Sorescu

- What would you take with you

If you had an opportunity
To commute daily between heaven and hell
Just to teach some classes?

- A book, a bottle of wine and a woman, Lord,
If i’m not asking too much.

- You are asking too much, We’ll take the woman.
She would talk too much,
Fill your head with small things,
And you wouldn’t have the time to prepare your classes.

- Lord, i beg of You, take my book,
I will write it myself, if i had beside me
A bottle of wine and a woman.
That’s what i wish, if i’m not asking too much.

- You are asking too much.

- What would you take with you

If you had an opportunity

To commute daily, between heaven and hell

Just to teach some classes?

- A bottle of wine and a woman, Lord,

If i’m not asking too much.

- You’ve asked that before, why are you stubborn?

It is too much, I told you, We take the woman.

- What do You have with her, why so much persecution?

Better take my wine,

It softens me and i couldn’t prepare my classes,

Getting inspiration from the eyes of my lover.

Silence, long minutes,

Maybe even eternities,

Letting me time for forgetting.

- What would you take with you

If you had an opportunity

To commute daily between heaven and hell

To teach some classes?

- A woman, Lord,

If i’m not asking too much.

- You are asking too much, We’ll take the woman.

- Then better take my classes,

Take my heaven and hell,

All or nothing,

I would commute between heaven and hell for no reason.

How could i scare and frighten the sinners in hell

If i didn’t have the woman, as teaching material, to show them?

How could i uplift the right ones in heaven,

If i didn’t have the book to translate to them?

How could i stand the trip and the differences

In temperature, luminosity and pressure

Between heaven and hell

If i didn’t have the wine to give me the courage?

The Wheel

By Marin Sorescu

I live in a wheel.

I can realize it
By the trees.
Every time i look through the window
I can see them
With the leaves in the sky,
Or on the ground.

And by the birds
That fly with a wing in the south
And with a wing in the north.

And by the Sun
That today rises in my left eye,
And tomorrow in the right one.

And by me
Who sometimes i am
And sometimes i am not anymore.