Five Poems of Lucian Blaga

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Metaphysical sadness

In ports open to the wonders of great seas
I sang with fishermen, tall shadows on the shore,
dreaming of ships that carry
the foreign miracle.

Next to the workers covered in soot
I erected steel bridges
over white rivers, over the immaculate bird’s flight,
over deep forests,
and each bridge would arch
as if carrying us over to a land of legend.

I spent long time among rocks
next to saints as old as folk riddles,
and I awaited the opening
of a window to freedom
through powerful evening spaces.

With them all
I agonized on the roads, on the shores,
among cars and churches.
Near bottomless wells
I opened my all-knowing eye.

I prayed with the workers in rags,
I dreamt next to the sheep with the shepherds
and waited in precipices with the saints.
Now I bow in the light
and cry in the late remains
of the star I used to walk on.
With the whole creation
I raised my wounds in the wind
and waited: oh, no miracle happens.

No miracle, no miracle!
And yet, with simple words like ours
the world, the elements, the day and the fire were made.
With feet just like ours
Jesus walked on water.

(Translated from Romanian by Lori Tiron-Pandit)

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Jesus and Magdalene

Jesus hied to the village with his thoughts roaming.
"Sin itself lay in her eyes and only death
Lay in her hand and in its burning clasp -
And yet, I cannot understand, a ray playing in her eyes
Cried to me and, dazzling, called:
God is within me too!"

Jesus hied to the village and the sun to dusk...
Jesus was dreaming -
And his eyes dwelt for a moment
On the smooth
Fens that were hiding the Jordan behind the reeds...

A wave of kindness drowned his face in a minute:
"Oh, the divine sun, it blinds you with its light
Even when it reflects itself onto the mud.."

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Lot

I have seen many and sin-breeding deeds
profaning the light and the wind,
and misunderstood customs, and fire games in the city.
Naked people have I seen in rusty-copper green lakes
kissing silvery swans.

I have seen, fear-stricken, in front of the gate,
girls dancing their whiteness off
for long nailed voivodes -
and I have seen priests in linen clothes intoxicating
the beggars with the wine the dead have been washed with.

I have seen women setting their seed on fire,
their mission cast between two eternities like an insult,
their breasts-ripe fruit with no milk, no milk within,
their breath killing bees and herbs.

I have seen transparent guests on the shore of blood:
children who will be delivered but are not desired
(if you stop your ears up
you can hear through spheres their bitter thirst,
their dumb murmur at the world's windows,
and their song of relief
when they find entrance in trees, dogs, and in birds).

I have heard many and sin-breeding words
profaning the light and the wind.
Alas, sons of the cities, you think that
no one has seen the sun ever,
and that clear light is nothing but a tale.

Your questions stir the depths,
and you hurt with stones the voiceless eyes of the wells,
but you cannot guess from their silence
the unexpected ending.

Alas, sons of the cities, in any deed
you deny the Earth its heavenly descent.
You haven't feasted the angels come with the Eucharist,
you haven't cleaned their dusty wings,
but scolded them instead - cruelly plucking their feathers
and bedizened in them, you dance and dance
around the golden neighbourhood of the accursed calves.

It will not be seven days, it will not be seven days.
Woe is me that I have to wait.
My flocks of sheep and my live coals
will sink into the sea.
I can hear my dogs barking from the bottom of the sea.
Alas, my God, for I have to hold my words
when I strip naked.
My woman shall turn into a salt pillar
when looking back.

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Psalm

Always grief to me has been your concealed solitude.
But God, what was I to do?
I played with you as a child and
Let imagination take you to pieces like a toy.

Then the untamed grew stronger within,
my songs died away,
and without ever having felt you close
I lost you for ever
in dust, in fire, in air, and on waters.

From sunrise to sunset
I am all clay and suffering.
You have confined yourself in the sky as in a coffin.
Oh, weren't you a closer kin to death
than you are to life,
you would speak to me. Right from where you are,

within the earth or within the tale - you would speak to me.
Show yourself among the thorns here, God,
so that I should know what you want of me.
Shall I catch in the air the poisoned spear
thrown by the other from the depths to wound you beneath your wings?
Or is there nothing that you want of me?

You are the mute, still identity
(a round itself is a),
and you ask for nothing. Not even for my prayers.
Look, the stars are coming into the world
along with my questioning sorrows.

Look, it is night with no windows outside.
What am I going to do from now on, God?
In you I take off my mortal flesh. I take it off
as if it were a coat left on the way.

(Translated by Liliana Mihalachi, University of Suceava, 4th year of study Philology, English-Romanian)

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To my readers

This is my Home.
Beyond it is the sun and the garden with beehives.
You are passing by, stranger,
Glancing through the fence, waiting for me to speak:
But where shall I start?
Believe me, believe me one could speak endlessly about anything:
About Fate and the well-wishing Snake
About Archangels ploughing the Garden of Man
About the Sky which we hope to reach,
About Hatred and Fall, Sadness and Crucifixion…
But above all, about the Great Passage.
Yet words are nothing else than the tears
Of those who wished so much to cry, but couldn’t.
Bitter, so bitter are all words
And therefore
Let me walk in silence amongst you
Cross your way
Eyes-closed.

(Rendered in English by Constantin Roman)


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