Dan Bruda ROMANIA Far-Eastern motif If I were anywhere in the boundlessness of Asia, tortured as I am that I can confess to nobody a secret that devours my peace and distresses my every second, I’d abruptly climb the ridge of the nearest mountain, I’d look for a tree in a remote corner of the wood and I’d cut in its flesh a deep hollow where I’d slowly and leisurely utter my sinful secret. Then I’d take a handful of clay and I’d press it in that hollow so that my secret remains there, uttered but known to nobody, until, one spring, it’ll burst out with the leaves of a branch. Archeology Each of these fragments have a totally different significance. Even if we reconstitute objects, figures, bodies, anyway we miss something. The essential, I believe. Their world always keeps its secret. As each of these fragments had once a life and gave hopes. But now they look at us meekly and coldly. They’re aware that we can at most restore their perfection or brilliance. But never their previous life. Time never wants to give up its prey. Hordes of shadows The fumes coming out of the asphalt after the rains’ storm that went on for hours quietly float as a virgin’s body dancing in the evening’s scorching heat. I stay at the window next to a cup of absynth and ask myself what might master Baudelaire have felt that very moment? Would he have been distressed by the noise of a plane that wearily goes to its run way? I’m tortured only by the night fall. As, alone, I know no more how to fight those hordes of shadows that just in a few moments will start their march to directions still unknown to me. For a moment I feel tempted to join them. But, alas, our steps do not coincide at all. Summer wanderings I’ve still not succeeded to tell you that my nights are shorter and shorter. The outside silence keeps refusing me. I sometimes absent-mindedly watch TV movies. But I avoid seeing their end. It frightens me as if I were personally obliged to take it upon myself. Some other times I try to leaf through a book wishing that the leaves’ rustling brings back to me the happiness and hope that I long for. But I realize that I don’t find my bearings in the words written by someone else, that I can’t but mime their feelings. Then I listen to the outside uproar or perhaps from within myself. Long shadows slip by the walls, And I fancy that, in each of them. it’s myself wandering while waiting for the sleep.
Copyright, Dan Bruda. |