Anxieties hard to stand I keep bearing in silence
My witness is Plato
But truth is a still much better adviser

The city shows in the night
one of its many mysterious  human images
Waste paper of many kinds in the street empty cans
Poor illusions of the summer that is gone
And the few voices of the last jolly fellows
Moving away in the night among the fluorescent lamps
Of the smart hotels on the pier…
(Look, life follows its lucky fellows!)

Their ignorant voices have poisoned the summer’s ghost
The wind from among the clouds scatters my words as if some leaves
Nests still unknown above the trees

September anxieties hard to stand I keep bearing in silence
Summer just like a hanged man keeps swinging
With its lead tongue hanging down
 

Cherries In Season / Vremea cireselor
 
Cherries were in season long ago
The warm drops vanishing through the thin skin of the fruit
Just as blood stirs up the body of a man
And it was in June
In a state of levitation the sturdy trunk of an afternoon
With the rain’s freckles ringing like the gold coins in the sun
A tree procession all along the borders
While scorching the highway I was wondering
Why the moment I had to bite the sweet fruit
Of the short holidays
Much better would I become much happier
Just to be able when in a mirror I shave in the morning
To put a bold face on life once again and again to take it from the beginning
 

Fisherman’s Village / Sat De Pescari

What brought you there, among the ruins, the cans, the yellow lichens parmelia parietina? A small fisherman’s village with a pub, a strange bazaar of sensations…
Among strong drinks you hear incredible histories for nothing
According to some old rites they break glasses. The tourists mingle with the natives, the dead with the quick. Outside it keeps pouring as if in the year of the flood. Anno Domini one thousand nine hundred…Now and then the mouth organ sighs. Since last night Grisa has got a long dark moustache. I feel like crying when I remember Gogol’s Dikanka.
You see that all’s been in vain.  Glory,  money, education.  I’ve put down just two lines in a month: Just like the sea that breaks against the cliffs / roars my youth alarmed at the experience voice .’ That’s all. Without philological preconceptions. Without final decisions. What would you have wished? Gloria mundi?  Nothing of the sort. Nothing. Inspiration turns its back on you. Drenched with water and pop-eyed the lines look like some fish bellies upwards.
 

Right In the Heart / Drept în Inimã

With a skimming eye: December
The sensation of cold is still the same
When careful about yourself
A pair of woolen stockings on you calculate
You launch into vague assumptions about
The spring that fights against illusions
A state of mind, of course,
A paraphrase of the look: devoured by smallpox the words
On the walls of the Prussian private enterprises
In the days of the empire
And once again taken unawares by time
Defeated before the battle
Try to hit it right in the heart
Now that you love yourself less than ever

(Traduceri de Olimpia IACOB)