by Dan Sociu

I’m a comic–book
character —
bubbles
come out
of my mouth
inside which
nothing’s
written.

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

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

by Dan Sociu

In the morning I wake up with fear of life,

At night I go to sleep with fear of death.

And it doesn’t seem to portend a good day,
doesn’t seem to portend anything at all
the morning when
accidentally looking back
you discover in your shit
burned matches

“how beautifully you used to pray when you were little, Duïu,
your elbows on the edge of your little bed,
your cute little bottom up”

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

by David J. Rothman

Just before the dawn the songbirds sing
As if they are so happy to be alive,
Mused some idiot who didn’t know anything
About how little birds survive.

It had been raining and blowing hard all night.
The courtyard chestnut creaked before the wind.
Inside, there was bourbon.  There was a fight.
We all made up, the crowd thinned.

Now the fingers of another dawn
Revealed familiar faces, enterprises.
We had pretended the past was done and gone,
Defeated by deals, by compromises.

Soon the sky was clear and crisp and blue
And we could smell the sea breeze flowing in,
Making the city sparkle as if new,
Subtle as a bulletin.

Still it was good, a moment in which a man
Might come to accept, or begin to understand
Something, in the way a cat inscrutably can
Understand or not understand

The well–worn coin of mortal landscapes
And an apartment’s overstuffed ashtrays,
Smeared glasses, song, and laughter, flickering out.