The way home is no longer the way home.

by Dan Sociu

One night my wife and I carried
ten bucketfuls of shit —
I think we haven’t spent such a good time
with each other since ’98:
we were vomiting and laughing, laughing and vomiting
— that day we swore
never to eat again —
between the dogs driven mad by the stench,
between the guinea hens, in the darkness of the flowering apricot trees,
the lantern light cut was her legs
gross in my father–in–law’s trousers,
and indeed, her feet went down
as in Solomon’s Proverbs
directly into death.

Then, unwashed — as people do
after they’ve crushed grapes, after funerals
or after pumping the cesspool —
unwashed we made crazy love
and in the dark our daughter’s blue eyes
stared at us.

The way home was never the way home.

— translated by Adam J. Sorkin, Dan Sociu, and Mihaela Niţă