The golden age of love

My hands are in love,
alas, my mouth loves -
and see, I am suddenly aware
that things are so close to me
I can hardly walk among them
without suffering.

It is a sweet feeling
of waking, of dreaming,
and I am here now, without sleep -
I clearly see the ivory gods,
I take them in my hands and
thrust them, laughing, in the moon
up to their sculpted hilts -
the wheel of an ancient ship, adorned
and spun by sailors.

Jupiter is yellow, Hera
the magnificent shades to silver.
I strike the wheel with my left hand and it moves.
It is a dance of sentiments, my love,
many a goddess of the air, between the two of us.
And I, the sail of my soul
billowed with longing,
look for you everywhere, and things come
ever closer,
crowding my chest, hurting me.

Nichita Stănescu

The failed encounter
poem for and with Gellu Naum

About when the red blade broke
and the Intercontinental Hotel lights went out
and the phone was vomiting a stew of voices
not yet used to speaking freely
I listened in the uncertain season:
"If you visit me Codrescu, come now."
It was in mid-january 1990
in Bucharest & I had been sent by Jim Brook
with a sheaf of new Naum traductions
and a bouquet of good wishes
from San Francisco to hand to the maestro.
"You can't go now or tomorrow!"
shouted my producer, "the satellite
only goes overhead twice a day!"
"OK, but a Gellu Naum only once a century!"
& I was ready to defy the satellite
but then it snowed & two immense days
rolled by made from rumors and gunshots
not yet sorted out & I crowded in with the herd
of the world press spouting uncertain stories
into the satellite going like a sheep overhead
and Gellu Naum was mad at me
because I hadn't responded to his appeal
I failed to hear his magical stories
which were released into the wind of Now
while the idiot tales streamed down
from satellites into unread archives

ANDREI CODRESCU

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

--Rudyard Kipling