Mirela ROZNOVEANU
NEW YORK ELEGIES
The New Orpheus
The abyss grows deeper and deeper
each time you glance back,
sang Orpheus as the rabid bitches tore him up.
Remember how I lost Eurydice;
how the path leading to life,
as flimsy as the spider’s insubstantial passage,
would vanish at the slightest doubt.
Beware while walking on the Inferno’s ridges
for the abyss is waiting to swallow you up;
you’re feeding it
while gazing down into it.
Another Spring
In the shade of trees—
dressed up like Arthur’s knights
magnificently celebrating my arrival, —
I, their Queen,
whom they would all die fighting for,
sob on from the depth of my smarting sides.
They tremble in their crisp membranes,
useless vegetable armors,
ready to provide relief to my anguish.
I have gloriously survived one more winter.
Desperations bloom again in May –
bordering the purple round table in the courtyard
with marjoram.
The sun is melting down the ice
which kept darkness quiet in my heart.
Trees with foliage
the hue of bull’s blood
pollinate my thoughts,
which mourn the throbbing of my blood.
The Black Bird
The wind is waving the myriads of shiny green leaves.
The fragrance of mown grass takes the field over,
flooding the Universe with its living vegetable moisture.
I am a black bird dwelling in this lofty tree hollow.
The tree is my love as I am his.
Divided by the different planes of existence,
we are unable to share a lot.
Yet, I am happy to sleep in his arms -
Loneliness in New York City
I’ve reached the point of praying that friends
be no more taken from me.
I light a candle at six in the morning and talk to Her,
the one who in the icon reads from the Book
very much like her Son.
We two are both alone: She reading, I entreating
Her to say “Good morning!” to me.
In the summer-heated city, the ocean’s vapors
fail to melt even the thinnest crust of the ice floes,
as they drift down from the North Pole of Souls.
People speak in discrete short syllables,
smiling briefly, defending their armor
under which new icy layers are constructed. Feelings
get accepted only when they reach the lowest heating threshold.
Each practices self-defense from everybody else;
no one is willing to get close to any one;
the preservation of the icy crust is vital
at the North Pole of Souls.
Afflictions are quickly frozen
(Ah, those wonderfully colored pills, drugs, joggings,
fitness clubs!)
passions bound in chains – She’s a silly Romanian
enthusiast – I’m constantly hearing this kind of excuse –
the ice-clad people walk along paths that
would never cross, and when deviancies do occur
they turn for help to ‘managers of the soul.’
Raphael, the Angel, descends as Eau de Cologne,
available on Fifth Avenue.
So mightily do the ice floes sparkle
that whole battalions of souls from all continents
are willing to get smashed only to be able to touch them.
Morgan le Fay of the North Pole of Souls
displays her breath-taking splendor.
The imperfect ones who resist being iced over,
will slowly die,
happily dreaming,
ranting their love soliloquies
in madhouses munificently provided with amenities.
Translated from Romanian by Heathrow O’HARE
