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.

It's Enough