Tonight we depart for the shore of my island,
the coach made of walnut is waiting, my dear,
remember to take some warm clothes and a garland,
and rush, for police dogs are wont to appear.
Don’t worry about it; the driver is dead,
the horses are dead too, and so is the carriage,
we’ll run with no trace to the harbor of dread,
to my five headed island, awaiting our marriage.
We’ll raise ugly children on that island that festers,
while steel branded butlers laugh dirt through their gills,
they’ll bore us with stories of long-gone ancestors,
with splashing wet corpses, with telegraph drills.
We’ll take many pictures but only for show,
to send them away for the world to observe,
like marbles we’ll spread their three eyes in the snow,
The Fourth Eye we’ll keep for the house and preserve.
The whole day we’d wander, bare-skinned, without flaw,
on fiery sleighs, we will fly through the skies,
and I, like a farmer, am striving to sow
some wheat, sweet and idle, reposed on your thighs.
I’m waiting, for now... It’s the middle of summer,
or the middle of winter, how strange is this story;
don’t speak, for the climb in the chill makes you stammer,
but the carriage seems dead, so why should you worry?
It’s just an illusion, I’m over the fence,
with four thousand candles I’m waiting for you,
don’t fret, for the white snow is just a pretense,
and the house guards keep mute and a-smoke in our view.
Step up – do not linger, come sing me a song,
the driver is suitably dead for our marriage,
no witnesses wait on the island, no throng,
my suit is of walnut, I’m almost a carriage.
My face I just found, if it’s gone by the morning,
it might be a gale, a tempest which looms,
for I am the mound of the freshest of tombs
and frosty your step will become without warning!
And so this is all, we’re departing at last.
The ghost of the carriage grins mute from the past.
(from the volume Testament - 400 de ani de poezie românească - 400 Years of Romanian Poetry - Daniel Ionita - editor and principal translator, assisted by Daniel Reynaud, Adriana Paul and Eva Foster - Minerva Publishing- 2019)
Translator: Daniel Ionita
see more poems written by: Adrian Păunescu
