Poetry

Giuseppe Milo photo

By

Dragos Niculescu

The Simple Order of Things

Mister Dobrescu and madame Clemance were living somewhere

on the bottom of the pond surrounded by rush and reed.

Once, an old gypsy told them that they would have lived

long ago in Slatina, but that they did not know each other at that time,

everybody was busy with completely different things.

At that time I was living a strange youth,

I was picking medicinal herbs early in the morning,

sometimes in the evening, too,

but I had heard that they were picking best at dawn,

I was still digging out of the extent of the field women with ivory teeth,

with breasts full of earthly tranquillity,

I was still marrying grasshoppers with the wind,

I was still falling asleep with my head on dragonfly hips.

As if I see them… Were appearing on the dusty road of the hill,

at each other arm, mister Dobrescu was wearing a long and shabby,

bluish frock coat, his hair turned white, flowing in locks ohnhis shoulders,

madame Clemance – corpulent, in her dress with great motifs,

Japanese and with the eternal fan, that she was never off.

Were seeming floating, moving their legs slowly,

their eyes have become green, the pupils, a little more darker,

were barely distinguishable.

I was turning to them, I had in my belt pouch

angelica, hanbane, knotweed and burdock.

‘You haven’t been visiting us, young man …’ was telling me,

from afar, madame Clemance, they were wet, some green duckweed yarn

had stuck to them here and there.

‘We stay every day prepared with warm coffee and muffins,

and you constantly avoid us. Well, is this possible?!’

‘You are for us as our son …’, was completing mister Dobrescu,

clinging to the umbrella, ‘unfortunately, too much wandering.’

I was handing them a bag of herbs, they were stretching their hands

with white and thinned by water skin,

down in the valley, could be seen the splendid pond,

a smoke was rising from a corner of the pool, and far away,

a few birds were entering the rectangular mirrors of the summer sky

and they were not seen anymore.

Stay With Me

Every morning I continue my evening prayer

and then I scatter myself like a trunk cut off by the hands

of a blind and crazy slave in several pieces,

which carry in their yellow sap the smell of the earth.

Become thousands of shards, unitas multiplex, the anonymous abbot

of a great resurrection, and my shadow falls asleep,

as a tergal of reconciliation, stretched over the domes of the cathedrals.

Below, on the streets, some sell empty bottles and call me,

with the hands pointing at me, at my shadow,

at my only entire remaining part:

‘Yet you are bone, the helplessness and the glory, the nothingness

and the sublime light are all, all there, in the whiteness of your bone.

Your lovely mother can explain to you why your bone is white.

We know, it’s nicer to rest or to die stuck in a cross,

but if you cannot die to the end

and your shadow will unheroic get cold, and it will fall upon us,

what are we going to do? Don’t you think of us?’

From the wooden shards like some scattered mirrors

on the ground, from that shadow like a gray, giant, sick bird,

I answer them: ‘My fear has never been sister

with death, has never been my silence sister

with life. Stay with me, stay with me, don’t

betray! After us the butterflies will be getting poorer

and the flowers more and more mothers of blame.”

Dragos Niculescu

Dragos Niculescu is awarded in many national and international literary contests, his poems being published by many important Romanian and from abroad cultural magazines. He figures among the fifty most important contemporary Romanian poets (NOESIS Cultural Society’s Anthology, 2001). He has published until present three poetry volumes and he has in print four poetry volumes and one drama volume. He is also literary critic and cultural editor.

He is an active presence at the book fairs and literary circles of the Writers Union of Romania.