SUCH A TUCH

by Marin Sorescu


I can make but gestures.
Words have no sound, the lips round up some words
For whose breathing there is no more air.
We put this afternoon to nights, this one, too.
Maybe that's where the name of white nights comes from, too.
But there the Northern nights
Are more than a blink.
In silence everything can be heard better,
We listen, displaced somewhere at the verge of the world,
The undone things' steps are passing by,
Or so it seemed?
You're also frightened. You say the sea is terrible,
Suddenly it also gives you a mood.
Now it's far away, we have torn it
Like a sheet of paper,
On which we would have written "The Sea exists",
Now the sea is crumpled somewhere,
(Just like "The Sea exists")
And only the mood is left to us,
That mood you were talking about,
And the one I want to touch,
To see whether it is also salted.
I have played with salts, lately,
Kids' fun jumping by bounds
To shine all kinds of images,
Incidents of ours and of others'.
When they are only incidents of others',
Heaven forbid,
They won't have any taste, will they?

(Translated from Romanian by Brigitta Daniela Buda)