Marin Sorescu

I go again to the sea and converse with Ovid whose verses like the Romanian coast roll along so wide and subdued: waves that wait for the ice to break. My poet, you that make what I sing to thousand years old, ancient boundary stone on the edge of the Romanian language, you the gulls have elected on to the governing board of our epics, of our song-grief you turned into Latin and gave to the wind to carry to Rome and there, chiselled into the column, await the Dacian prisoners. You the first whom nostalgia, our dor, ate up in those fields where the dust is sweet. You the first to put your trust like a child in poetry’s spellbinding power and in help from abroad. Sooner the Emperor would have sent experts to you at Tomi, to change the climate, than see you back home, your airy fame back in the purple of his retainers. Who, he has said himself, could be better suited to stand on the shore of the Pontus Euxinus, observing how gradually it becomes the Black Sea, than a poet, a good one, and one of repute—whom shall we send then, whom? And the choice fell on you, Ovid. You were the first to occur to him because you had just begun to be known, appreciated and talked about like a bitter-sweet herb—that was your predicament. Augustus liked your elegies, but only from a distance, where they had the remedial effect the physicians prescribed, an agreeable melancholy, after meals especially, when they repeated on him... The elegies were a medicine prescribed by the physicians to save the Empire. He even said: ‘Why hasn’t that boy sent us anything lately? Force him to work, pinch him a bit, so that he’ll grow sad and Pontic, this wind is troubling me again, I’m gulping air...’ ‘People are asking why you had to relegate him,’ a senator timidly interjected. ‘Suggest to them that he subverted the Empire,’ the Emperor cynically smiled. ‘Morally or materially?’—the exalted servant seemed hard of hearing. ‘What, are you trying to drive me into a quandary? Both, let’s say, a bit of each. Ovid has done immense material and moral harm to Latinity, and the citizens are indignant. Or perhaps,’ he considered, ‘moral would be better, after all we are an Imperium and don’t stint the expenses of a poet, but in moral matters we’re strict: so, he corrupted our youth.’ Next day Augustus had second thoughts: ‘No, for the time being no explanations, for anyone, till we’ve thought of something more plausible’; and, to change the subject, ‘What's Horace doing?’ ‘It's taken   hold of him too, he’s writing no more odes but only epodes, nothing but epodes, an obscure sort of gibberish, what shall we do about Horace, will he too become a case?’ ‘Let him be, let him be. Let’s wait and see how he develops, he may have talent. Maecenas and his house, after all, will take care of the cost and we shall send him the bill with a troop of a hundred men. But as for Ovid, he shall stay for a while yet at Tomi, and no one shall hurt a hair of his head. We shall think it over, mediate, consult the augurs too. No precipitous measures, where poets are concerned.’ Two thousand years have passed, and the Emperor has not hit on appropriate action, he’s thinking still. But you must not give up hope, Ovid, you will be pardoned. The matter was only provisional, an emergency, so be patient, the problem will be resolved, as I said, when circumstances permit. I go again to the sea and converse with Ovid, the poet whose lines of fortune and arteries my earth senses when he raises the Dobruja’s broad hand to his brow.

I have hidden inside a sea shell but forgotten in which. Now daily I dive, filtering the sea through my fingers, to find myself. Sometimes I think a giant fish has swallowed me. Looking for it everywhere I want to make sure it will get me completely. The sea-bed attracts me, and I’m repelled by millions of sea shells that all look alike. Help, I am one of them. If only I knew, which. How often I’ve gone straight up to one of them, saying: That’s me. Only, when I prised it open it was empty.

I. I’m trying to spell out a state of amazement, A sweet dilation, the sway of spirit, That only finds room in your shape. They say that Transposed in our alphabet A Chinese sentence can turn into A series of one and the same conjunction. For instance: “And and. And and and. And and and and.” This is a genuine transcription of the beautiful poem “The Dance of the Yangtze River Valley And the Yangtze River.” II. Well, how many miracles, how many Chinese miracles, Have I missed this time? Too shrunk within the heart of Europe, Stuck to Greek reason, Spoiled by syllogism, And born too late for the Far East! III. No one gave me a silk scroll as a present At the time of the Han dynasty, Much less during the coming ones. My feet didn’t develop corns on the silk road, My shadow didn’t pass on the winding way To take the desert oases in its arms. I never wrapped my shoulders In the wavy mantle of the Yellow River. In 120 B.C. I didn’t show myself — idiot! — At the Music Chamber. What melodies I could have heard! My ear, a shell devoid of the sea’s roar, Missed the treasure of sounds Invading north to south. Would I have still remained With so many uncertainties? IV. I was late to the contest of impromptu poems And didn’t make libations to the Muse Along with Wang Xizhi. I wish I’d seen how they spelled “The literary spirit and the dragon engravings.” Humble observer, hidden in a fold of time, I wish I could participate unseen In the painting of the world’s first landscape. It would have included me no doubt As an accident on the horizon, A leaf on the sky’s water. I wish I’d been a judge when the names were checked Or, lazily lying in the Doctrine of the Great Vehicle, I wish I’d wandered beyond nature’s limits, And been struck by the sensation of a universal vacuum. V. I wonder if The five rice measures Would have finally revealed The vital principle. VI. Can’t you say anything, Beautifully written character? The Great Wall fits into you Like the moon in a cacoon. Open the silk door a moment And let this state of amazement in — Include this lotus flower In your closed-circuit breath. Why are you so silent, When you used to tell me about all these things?

Oh you saints, Let me enter your society, If only as a statistician. You’re old, Perhaps the years are Getting you down by now, Laying themselves over you In layers of color. Just let me take care Of your dirty work in All the nooks and crannies. For example I could Swallow light At the Last Supper And exhale your halos After the devotionals. From time to time, At a distance of half a wall, I could Form my hands into a horn And shout, Now for the believers, Now for the unbelievers Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

Between people’s ideals and their realization there is always a greater drop than in the highest of waterfalls. This potential gradient can be exploited rationally, if we build a sort of power station above it. The energy it supplies, even if we use it only to light our cigarettes, is something anyway; for while one is smoking one can very seriously think up ideals even crazier.

All the museums are afraid of me, Because each time I spend a whole day In front of a painting The next day they announce The painting’s disappeared. Every night I’m caught stealing In another part of the world, But I don’t even care About the bullets hissing toward my ear, And the police dogs who are onto The smell of my tracks, Better than lovers who know The perfume of their mistress. I talk to the canvases that put my life in danger, Hang them from clouds and trees, Step back for some perspective. You can easily engage the Italian masters in conversation. What noise of colors! And hence I’m caught Very quickly with them, Seen and heard from a distance As if I had a parrot in my arms. The hardest to steal is Rembrandt: Stretch a hand out, there’s darkness — The terror seizes you, his men don’t have bodies, Just closed eyes in dark cellars. Van Gogh’s canvases are insane, They whirl and roll their heads, And you have to hold on tight With both hands, They’re sucked by a force from the moon. I don’t know why, Breughel makes me want to cry. He wasn’t any older than me, But they called him the old man Because he knew it all when he died. I try to learn from him too But can’t stop my tears From flowing over the gold frames When I run off with The Four Seasons under my armpits. As I was saying, every night I steal one painting With enviable dexterity. But the road’s very long So I’m caught in the end And get home late at night Tired and torn to shreds by dogs Holding a cheap imitation in my hands.

After you’ve learned to walk, Tell one thing from another, Your first care as a child Is to get used to your name. What is it? They keep asking you. You hesitate, stammer, And when you start to give a fluent answer Your name’s no longer a problem. When you start to forget your name, It’s very serious. But don’t despair, An interval will set in. And soon after your death, When the mist rises from your eyes, And you begin to find your way In the everlasting darkness, Your first care (long forgotten, Long since buried with you) Is to get used to your name. You’re called — just as arbitrarily — Dandelion, cowslip, cornel, Blackbird, chaffinch, turtle dove, Costmary, zephyr — or all these together. And when you nod, to show you’ve got it, Everything’s all right: The earth, almost round, may spin Like a top among stars.

Water: no matter how much, there is still not enough. Cunning life keeps asking for more and then a drop more. Our ankles are weighted with lead, we delve under the wave. We bend to our spades, we survive the force of the gusher. Our bodies fountain with sweat in the deeps of the sea, Our forehead aches and holds like a sunken prow. We are out of breath, divining the heart of the geyser, Constellations are bobbing like corks above on the swell. Earth is a waterwheel, the buckets go up and go down, But to keep the whole aqueous architecture standing its ground We must make a ring with our bodies and dance out a round On the dreamt eye of water, the dreamt eye of water, the dreamt eye of water. Water: no matter how much, there is still not enough. Come rain, come thunder, come deluged dams washed away, Our thirst is unquenchable. A cloud in the water’s a siren. We become two shades, deliquescent, drowning in song. My love, under the tall sky of hope Our love and our love alone Keeps dowsing for water. Sinking the well of each other, digging together. Each one the other’s phantom limb in the sea.

The chicken I bought last night, Frozen, Returned to life, Laid the biggest egg in the world, And was awarded the Nobel Prize. The phenomenal egg Was passed from hand to hand, In a few weeks had gone all round the earth, And round the sun In 365 days. The hen received who knows how much hard currency, Assessed in buckets of grain Which she couldn’t manage to eat Because she was invited everywhere, Gave lectures, granted interviews, Was photographed. Very often reporters insisted That I too should pose Beside her. And so, having served art Throughout my life, All of a sudden I’ve attained to fame As a poultry breeder.