By Poetry
Poetry is the eye that weeps
it is the shoulder that weeps.
It is the hand that weeps
the eye of the hand that weeps
It is the weeping sole
the eye of the weeping heel.
O, you friends,
poetry is not tears
It is the act of weeping –
weeping from eyes not yet created,
tears from eyes
of him who should be handsome,
tears of him who should be happy.
translated by Stelian Apostolescu and JoAnne Growney
from
https://joannegrowney.com/NichitaStanescuforWeb.htm
About the state of struggling
As though the superior knife
had cut my clouds from the mountain tops
does my immense and headless body hurl itself about,
leaving its fugitive head in the sky.
It cannot die though it no longer knows
what its own life meant, in ages past.
The eye above observes
the body below, its struggling –
From the open throat
a flock of green and chirping birds wells up –
The hand thrusts its claws
into the mirage –
The eye, suspended, watches
the desperate struggle.
The ship of flesh, caught in the storm,
will never founder –
Help me lovely cathedral
I saw in another town –
This moment of chaos
tolls with your bells.
I pray thee lovely cathedrals,
you, in another town,
allow the beauty of silence
to flow over me –
This body is the same
as the body of a river
suddenly beheaded by
its speaking delta.
May the flight of red birds
overtake you, lovely cathedral –
they rise in the sky, howling and croaking,
laughing from the severed neck –
Receive them, lovely cathedral
on the tongue of your bell, receive them –
Help me, lovely cathedral
i saw in another town –
Grant me silence, lovely cathedral,
and a different manner of death.
The ascensions of words
Thus, like the skin
of a shorn ewe, the day rises.
It is difficult to skin the self from a stone.
It is difficult to skin memory from a Greek.
But why should we talk about these!
After all,
light too has a skin,
light too can be skinned…
So
light too is guilty of being.
A gust of fresh air
comes with the millennium.
We are beautiful;
why should we not be beautiful?
We eat one another
only from hunger,
from adoration,
from structure,
from love.
It doesn’t matter.
We are what we are,
that is, beautiful.
I carry my ever still blood
in my heart.
I carry my ever salt tear
in my eye.
I carry the angel in the middle of heaven.
From:
https://mypoeticside.com/show-classic-poem-28171
Previous articles and more poems:
https://worlds-of-words.com/2018/03/31/nichita-stanescu-the-poet/
https://worlds-of-words.com/2019/03/31/nichita-stanescu-poet-poetry/
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