Poetry – Radu Vancu | Cassandra Voices

Poetry – Radu Vancu

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Master of children’s small fingers
& of the indestructible hair of girls
& of the transparent shields of the gendarmes –

today I saw videos of children with broken heads
& fingers broken, I saw girls dragged by their shiny
& indestructible hair by gendarmes with shields transparent

as your indestructible light, I saw
indestructible teeth broken, indestructible bodies
shattered, I saw the blood made by you

splattering in the world made by you
& there was still so much beauty in it
& it is exactly this that mashes me.

Any amount of beauty mashes me.
An indestructible beauty in a world blown into pieces –
your cynicism is divine, indeed.

I saw a dog licking the bleeding face
of his mistress, collapsed under the boots of the gendarmes,
careless to their blows which also crushed his ribs.

He wagged so happily his tail
when she raised her grazed hand & patted him,
there was so much indestructible light around him,

for him the evil only passed accidentally through the world.
A cop with a high visor, a blond & pure child,
came running & hit her again.

Master, I sometimes tell myself you only passed accidentally
through the history of the world you made, just as we pass
only accidentally through the poems we write.

And that it is of your indestructible & luminous beauty
that the hardest transparent shields are made.
And that the happiest of us are wagging our tails,

licking the bleeding faces of our loved ones. Mashed
under the boots of the seraphim rapid intervention units.
Terrorized by the anti-terrorist units of the angels.

Who to endure so much beauty
– and until when
– and why.

You unbelievably gentle master, if I wouldn’t feel sometimes
your harsh tongue licking my bleeding brain,
if I wouldn’t see your furry tail sometimes

wagging happily – everything would be easier
& more unbearable. Don’t worry, we’re talking here
between indestructibles.

Listen to this poem in the original Romanian below.

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About Author

Radu Vancu (Sibiu, Romania, 1978) is a Romanian writer, scholar and translator. Associate professor at the „Lucian Blaga” University from Sibiu. Editor-in-chief of the Transilvania magazine. Editor of the Poesis Internațional magazine. President of the Romanian PEN Centre. National editor of the Romanian section for the Poetry International website. He has published eight books of poems (between 2002 and 2019), a novel, Transparența (2018), a diary (2015), six books of criticism and literary theory (between 2007 and 2016). He has translated mainly from the works of Ezra Pound (an on-going 4 volumes edition), John Berryman (a selection from the Dream Songs) and W.B. Yeats (prose). He is an organizer of the International Poetry Festival in Sibiu Poets in Transylvania.

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