THE CANAL

 

The land is illuminating faintly, the thought is freezing  

at the window of a snorting empire of evil the straight

well-marked line drawn on the map with the red pencil

unites the foaming Danube with the Black Sea and far too black

by heavy fogs that fall – the Romanian intelligentsia is digging

and the greedy and wicked landed gentry too, a curse suddenly fulfilled,

fine hands that held the pen as a weapon and counted the money

with gentle movements of caress of the skin are now gliding up and down

on the harsh handle of the spade: they are digging the stony

clay eagerly to discover a treasure, gathering treasures in heaven

with backs tightened to stars, only black stars are counting

the corpses that are lying on the bottom of the riverbed as creeping

stems of hemp, bony tibiae, iron tibiae that are singing with flair

one next to another as an endless xylophone are falling on their bones

the tyrant sledges are gliding till they break them to pieces, 

they turn the bones to dust for glue and foam for putting out fires – 

the happy proletariat is applauding on the banks, sneering, 

some repentant torturer also escapes meanwhile turned 

into a cannibal who blows kisses and sneers happily

with the arms arisen to the choir of harlots who are surpassing 

the brass band with shouts of happiness as if the kingdom of heaven 

had fallen on earth the waters are growing on the riverbed, 

the guardians with cigarettes with pasteboard mouthpiece 

between teeth are contemplating them as drunkard mothers 

their own perfumed sons; “I want home”, one is starting 

with the arms full of field flowers gathered next to wiry fence,

“To hell with you!”, the voice of the torturer snaps, “Here is your eternal

home, go to bed, old man!”, and that one with the flowers

who had been snatched from his wedding having a clear-starched

collar lies down on the bottom of the canal as if in a coffin and puts

himself the flowers on the chest, but no candlelight: “Cover him

with dust!”, murmured a hoarse voice, and the rain is falling off the rusty

pillars and knots of barbed wire, no bird in the air full of affliction, 

no ironies, no elegies, no idylls, only the fogs of the heath 

are leveling the uncertain contrasts of the thought, the limpid 

appearance of life: only death seems here a certainty. 

Who is wailing the hours of today, the hours of tomorrow?

I am not, my countrymen neither, nor the marine animals – the country

has torturers, kindled daggers and skies and wounds that are burning

on the firmament and that are saying: curse, they tell: to hell with it

and that’s all, those ones who tear the azure with axes, the remainders

of the empire of evil as a misfortune with ominous soft mouths 

they open it emphatically as if a cow’s muzzle to arouse the torturers

at their dire sprees when it’s getting dark and the thoughts get numb

in the name of present laws – give all you have for the country! And piss

in their mouth you, great tycoons and you, filthy riff-raff! Foaming

towards the Black Sea as a red scar, flowerbed where the souls 

had been thrown as some putrid potatoes, look at the dumb sky 

as an expiation of treason – anyway they would have died, 

but now their unknown sin is watering the heath 

and also carries ship loaded with sick histories. 

Who is crying in the crimson air? We’ll remain 

on this shore among chains of grass and wormwood, 

and you, Beloved, why wouldn’t you carry me on a ship 

to the endless sea over there you hear diggers 

who are singing fine streams that are twitching 

as the last breath, lashes of whip on the back, 

at bottom twinkles of brimstone.