Translation: "Blueprint for a Poem Based on Celebrity Models" and Four Other Poems by Ion Monoran
Translated from the Romanian by Marius Surleac and Marc Vincenz
[In a cold metal voice]
In a cold metal voice the winds penetrate small windows through the thicket of reckless dreams— but not before autumn confesses its denial slipping from rooftops onto the sidewalks acrid among cigarette butts and withered leaves— if you may listen carefully you can hear its grief boring into the asphalt— and though it darkens a little earlier, like a match fizzling at the end of a late conversation, the city still flickers somewhere in the vicinity of the margins, emptying the heart of truth.
[Toward evening, I believed
in your sunburnt pastures]
Toward evening, I believed in your sunburnt pastures; and like a vagrant in a red sweater I avoid the villages, skipping back and forth over the Timis River, crashing into high-voltage power lines, into tractors and ploughs. I trusted you with our terrible love. Reading the newspapers at random, not suspecting that the tastes of the era might completely change the tradition, without knowing that, for you, destiny is no chasm, even if it opens a similar perspective; as long as cities and factories will be built, new generations will be forced to comprehend that this will change no one. I believed in you like a big, bad beast of burden with gentle, salt-lick eyes. I was confused that there are no distances between our villages and yet there’s a lonely room far up in the remotest blue.
[When you have nothing else to do]
When you have nothing else to do, collect all the words on your tongue and start talking of freedom. As long as poems about freedom remain unfinished, you have nothing else to do but continue what you started. As long as you are flat out convinced that after you there will be others to carry on who will manage to call things by name more bluntly than you did yourself.
Blueprint for a Poem Based on Celebrity Models
Come closer, O apparition of beautiful animalistic life, when night opens itself up more to you than for me, come out of your cage unnoticed by a single soul, with such loving fingers, slip through the flame’s fur when birds resume their flight through the ragged hedges of everyday like those small blue clouds emerging out of coffee cups— Look! The nightingale sings of beautiful uncertainties and slashes the sky into ribbons, gentle and green between yellow and blue or a deep orange, between yellow and red— vague crystal shapes weave mosses on walls, and from doubt, an insignificance reflects, and the glow of the moon blusters through the city of sadness and laughter.
(written in the army: Pitesti Petrochemical Works)
Hell only knows if I was ever a poet Since I arrived here in Pyrolysis II*, I missed my turn at the pen and at handwriting’s blank page. There’s no more time for solitude, the steam pipes bellow and there’s a cyanide smell that burns the eyes. I’m on the second floor of a building with four levels, and am responsible for the wheelbarrow, and catching the buckets full of mortar that drop from the crane. I shout and swear like hell when a woman in overalls with her hair tucked up under her helmet passes. Standing on the scaffolding, we soldiers undress her with our glances from morning to night— because this Pyrolysis process will bring the national economy a benefit of two million Lei daily. I don’t even know what autumn’s rusty leaves look like. The only flower that grows here is the corn, and it is green from spring until late autumn.
*A department within the petrochemical works responsible for the 2nd stage of the pyrolytic chemical process in which chemical substances are heated to high temperatures. Pitesti Petrochemical Works was one of the largest refineries in Europe, and produced 60% of all the bitumen in Romania.
Born in Petroman Village, Timis, Romania, Ion Monoran (1953–1993) was a poet and publisher. His first poems were published in 1976 in Forum studenţesc magazine. He lectured at the Pavel Dan literary circle of the Student Culture House in Timisoara and collaborated and published with Orizont, Amfiteatru, Echinox, Luceafărul literary journals. None of his books were published during his lifetime. Monoran is considered to be one of the most representative poets of the ’80s generation, a visionary ahead of his time. Monoran was one of the key leaders of the anti-communist revolution that began in Timișoara, on December 16, 1989 and became a cultural hero of the revolution.
In 2019, the first annual Ion Monoran International Poetry Festival took place in Timisoara, Romania, and continues every December in commemoration of the December Revolution of 1989.
Marius Surleac is a Romanian scientist (a bioinformatician), poet, translator, and award-winning photographer. His translations from English into the Romanian include the poetry of Marc Vincenz, G. C. Waldrep, Fady Joudah, Cornelius Eady, Valzhyna Mort, Peycho Kanev, and several others. He has published an original collection of poetry in Romanian: Zeppelin Jack (Herg Benet, 2011) and a bilingual collection of translations, The Propaganda Factory, or Speaking of Trees / Fabrica de Propaganda, sau Apropo de Copaci by Marc Vincenz, (Tracus Arte, 2015). Marius’ poetry & translations have been published in many journals worldwide. His website is here.
