Mihai Ursachi
The Crown of Straw
A ball of clay launched in violence from a blind slingshot,
this globe of pain hurtles far into chaos,
bearing my love: What good,
elaborate lute songs? What good,
magniloquent twilight of violet hues?
The voice on the face of the waters
you don’t hear, don’t believe, don’t speak about.
Behold my ancestors’ patch of earth; here they ploughed
ten thousand years; here their gentle oxen drowned in clay
at the foot of the skies. May they rest in peace,
the gentle ones, may the eternally restless find their rest.
Their field is the azure, stars their grain:
but a crown of straw, a wreath of nonredemption, adorns my brow.
A restless plummeting into the unplumbed precipice
of the sky . . . What good,
the dizzy drunkenness of the forest in bloom? What good,
the fiery madness of an impossible thought?
Oh, won’t these eyes ever open upon
their salvation? Never
will I cease to love the impossible.
A crown of straw adorns my head.
With boundless love, the abyss
swallows me, the abyss embraces
this sphere, which is
His tear.
The weeping on the face of the waters
you don’t hear, don’t believe, don’t speak about.
Translated by Adam J Sorkin, Georgiana Farnoaga
Page(s) 189
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