Dumitru Chioaru: 2 poems translated from the Romanian by Heathrow O’Hare
7 Septembrie 2007 de vetiver
(Mirela Roznoveanu: Dumitru Chioaru, The Life and Opinions of Professor Mouse, Limes Publishing, Cluj-Napoca, 2004. The selected poems were published in the cultural magazine Origins/Romanian Roots, Norcross, Georgia, USA)
Golden Valley
” (Valea Aurie) and “The Eyes of the City” (Ochii Orasului) are two items in Dumitru Chioaru’s
Sibiu
cycle of 23 poems: Scenes of the Stained-Glass City with which he opened his outstanding 2004 volume. The former poem is more in the line of the cycle in that it evokes an occurrence in the poet’s adolesence (and intellectual formation) against the background of a growing and developing medieval town. The poem begins with the golden grove of its river (now the fully developed housing district of Valea Aurie) as emerging from a well-known Romanian fairytale, “Youth Never Ending and Life without Death.” The cultural allusion is moved further to involve the poetry book which shaped the sensibilities of Romanian youth during and after the post-Stalinist ideological thaw, Nichita Stanescu’s first published volume of 1960 The Meaning of Love. Finally the poem modulates into a visionary experience of the poet, now a fully grown individual who is granted a chance meeting of his first love over (and out of) a glass of beer he is drinking in that very neigborhood. The emotion fully impacts the reader who cannot but share in the mystic nature of the encounter.
The latter poem posted by Mirela Roznoveanu dwells upon a subsidiary theme, the political one. Living in the city, participating in the market place, which is at the very center of economic and social life, a kind of a forum, has always been, down history, managed or controled by the omnipresent and ever watchful Big Brother, whose eyes are inbuilt in the tiled roofs of the public buildings! The moment selected by the poet – when he himself was a witness of the suddenly quickened time of history in the making – was the outbreak of the December 1989 Revolution that ostensibly put an end to the communist era. The eyes of the city, however, are still wide awake like some black holes of memory. A very unconventional and shattering conclusion of Chioaru’s subtle and mature historical-cum-political analysis. Stefan Stoenescuseamănă cu un basm despre tinereţe
fără bătrâneţe şi viaţă fără de moarte –
nu-l voi povesti nimănui
nu-l voi tocmi pre versuri
ci-l voi da pe un pahar cu bere blondă
şi fotografia în care beau paharul cu bere
fără să mă pierd în noţiuni abstracte
doar o întâmplare din adolescenţă
răsare din spuma berii tremurătoare
ca iarba călcată-n picioare de copii
în jocul de-a v-ati-ascunselea
pe lîngă blocurile noi de beton
altădată pădure cu cărări umbroase
pe unde ne-am destăinuit iubirea
într-o prindere de mână electrizând copacii
câte doi câte patru
(ştiam pe de rost Sensul Iubirii)
în Valea Aurie aproape de cer
credeam că iubirea e drumul spre cer –
nu mai ştiu sigur dacă a fost iepure
sau pisică
ţâşnind dintre tufe în cale
dar la fel ca în basm
m-am trezit şi eu în Valea Plângerii –
după ani şi ani de uitare
pe terasa din marginea cartierului de blocuri
beau singur o bere – blonda
femeie din adolescenţă răsare din pahar
trasă la faţă îmbrăcată în negru
mă fixează contre jour în obiectivul
unui vechi aparat de fotografiat
şi nimic n-o poate opri
GOLDEN VALLEY
Golden Valley
ending and life without death –
I won’t tell it to anyone
I won’t put it in verse
but I will give it in exchange for a glass of pale ale
together with the photograph that pictures me drinking it up
and I won’t lose myself in abstract notions
only one occurrence in my adolescence
is rising from the foam of my jittery beer
like the grass trampled upon by children’s feet
as part of their playing hide and seek
around and about the new concrete buildings
formerly a dark wood with shadowy trails
along which we have confessed one another’s love
in a handclasp that electrified the trees
Golden Valley
close to the sky
we thought love was the way to heaven —
Valley
of
Lamentations
–
of an old camera
and nothing can ever stop her
la întretăierea drumurilor comerciale
veşnic ridicate
ochi prin care priveau alţi ochi
de câte ori judele în costum de catifea ţinea sfat cu poporul
de câte ori se făcea zarvă între târgoveţii
ca nişte găuri negre-n memorie
THE EYES OF THE CITY
The Big Marketplace of the city
lying at the crossing of commercial routes
is watched over by eyes with wide open eyelids
made of tiles
eyes through which other eyes would watch
whenever the justice of peace in a velvety suit
held a conference with the people
or whenever a scuffle broke out between the local
tradesmen and those of foreign stock
whenever the messengers of the empires equipped
with state-of-the-art armed forces
came on horseback spying the shadows
of the towers built by the guilds –
the city’s ever wide awake eyes
have lasted through the ages like a mask
of the eyes of humans watching –
during the red city’s red years
people got used to the ever watchful eyes
as the passer-by to his shadow
until one sunny December morning
a youth was gunned down in the middle of the street
by a blast of bullets
fired from the eyes of the city
thereby shattering the ice-bound historical silence –
at the crossing of commercial times
Gheorghe Lazar the great teacher of the nation carved in stone
sits and stares blankly and speechless at the people
busily opening beer caskets in the marketplace –
the world has stealthily changed
only the eyes of the city have remained
ever watchful
like black holes in one’s memory
Superb
Imi place
Atat am de spus
Dani
[Reply]
Am citit doar poemul Valea aurie
Si ce e si mai interesant e ca asa simt si eu
Cu toate ca sunt mult mai tanar
Superb
Multa stima
[Reply]