George  VULTURESCU

The letter opens the crypts of the vowels

1.
Black as a snow storm,
the letter opens the crypts of the vowels.
There will be neither today nor tomorrow, there will be neither sky
nor earth. ”The real sky, indeed, is here and there, including even the place where you are and which you walk.”*
Not all that the letter begins the word ends: not all that is name finds room
in the inscription on the crosses, as the image in the mirror is not the same
as the one that reflects in it.
So do we stand above the letter
like the pilgrims above a well
like mercy above the cemeteries

* Jakob Boehme 

2.
Black as the loneliness of the blind eye above
a glass of alcohol
The coming into the room of the first angel is unforeseeable.
The second one finds the tunnel of mourning in your eye. “Tell me, which of you will buy a night to spend  it with me?”*
  Only a hand with angles can reach the page.
You write with them. The first letter lingers long in its white
as the crosses  do at the crossroads around which the wind whistles and the ravens crow. The second letter has a smoke-like tail coiling
round the third one.
The text looks like the art of mummifying:
You have taken the viscera out. Who is the dead man when you write about death?

* A.S. Puschin

3.
Black the lichens round the letter start trembling.
They look like some little veins through which the letter receives blood
As the bramble does the sap through the rotten clay.
You reach out your hand for her lover’s hips. You open her arabesques as you open your woman’s knees on the wedding night.
Now you sense the  fire lines of the hieroglyph gathering up round
You like a ring.
Who is the one  the poem weds us to?
4.
Where the letters are there will always be a Getsimani Garden
It is Midnight round one of them, it is Midday round another one.
The letter that bears the vermin is among
the others, as is the belladonna among the plants on the hill.
Various kinds of beasts gather up near each of them.
Some of them will follow you in other letters:
as Breughel’s blind men on the brink of the precipice
so the letters cling to the others on the page
who keeps walking before them? who keeps following them?

5.
Everybody has his letter.
It is warm and comfortable within it. My departed lie here:
father and mother. And my patient forefathers.  And my son
Looking at me
So do we stand over the letter
as the pilgrims do over a well
as grace does over the cemeteries

6.
In the Midday and at Midnight the letters
detach from my brain like the rocks in the mountains. There are caves in their place
 where poisonous herbs sprout. Some others remain empty and the phosphor bees take them for their honeymoon.
The poem is like a snow storm round the letters.
Put on the mask and reverse the bear fur. The letter must not know your name.                         
 Traduceri de Olimpia IACOB