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| George Topîrceanu (1886-1937) |
from Migdale amare [Bitter Almonds], Bucharest, 1928
Summertime Sonnet
Way down in the matte heavens, where it hunches,
Colossal blast furnace athwart the sky,
A sun diaphanous and still lets fly
With blazing rays in horizontal bunches.
The city, ‘deeply sunken in its dreaming’,
Though everyday appearances be vaunted,
The same as every year is being haunted
By sundry fancied plagues with which it’s teeming.
Through insect-thickened atmosphere there waft
Queer breezes from afar and, borne aloft,
Furtive contagion now its way does worm . . .
I close the shutters, leaving not a chink,
And feel my fearful heart begin to shrink
Till tiny as a typhoid-fever germ.
Rainy-day Sonnets
1.
For a whole week I’ve slept in a damp bed,
What with the rain that’s dripping through the ceiling…
Just one more night of this—I’ve got a feeling
The rafters will come crashing on my head!
The Balkans have been giving the impression
They are about to go insane . . . that’s why,
Since in the East the flames lit up the sky,
The world’s been in a hydro-treatment session.
Or did the Misanthrope who rules up there
Decide we have a second Flood to bear?
I’m not afraid of death, you ought to know,
But when the Kingdom comes, I shall decamp,
I’ll get a visa—off to Mars I’ll go.
Down here I've had enough of mould and damp.
2.
Like Crusoe on his isle, I’m in seclusion.
It’s been a while since anybody knocked
Upon my door, and anyway it’s locked:
Needing folk—I’ll dispense with that illusion.
Happier than the legendary Noah,
To join me on my ark, of all mankind,
I picked one girl, the rest I left behind.
And floating high, the flooded world I show her . . .
In vain you throng in a freeloading horde,
You countless specimens of earthly fauna,
I won’t take any other beasts on board!
One mating pair should be all it will take—
A minstrel with a maiden in his corner—
The antediluvian world to remake.
English translation © Alistair Ian Blyth, 2021
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