Burned Forest
~
Nichita Stãnescu
Black snow was falling. The tree line
shone when I turned to see -
I had wondered long and silent,
alone, trailing memory behind me.
And it seemed the stars, fixed as they were,
ground their teeth, a stiffened nexus,
an infernal machine, tolling
the halted hours of conciousness.
Then, a thick silence descends,
and my every gesture
leaves a comet tail in the heavens.
And I hear every glance I cast
as it echoes against
some tree.
Child, what were you seeking there,
with your gangly arms and pointed shoulders
on which the wings were barely dry -
black snow drifting in the evening sky.
A horizon howling, far from view,
darting its tongues and anthracite,
dragged me forever down the mute row,
my body, half naked, sliding from sight.
In distances of smoke the town afire,
blazing beneath the planes, a frigid pyre.
We two, forest, what did we do?
Why did they burn you, forest, in a toga of ash -
and the moon no longer passes over you?
From the book Bas-Relief with Heroes
English translation by Thomas Carlson and Vasile Poenaru.
