The Minstrel’s Death, and: The Execution, and: Hats Off, and: Epistle to Friends

The Minstrel’s Death

My love, I’m thinking of youThe way a prowler longs for an earl’s pocket watch!While in my flesh handcars collide head onAnd horses suffer heart attacks.

Do you get to see in mirrors one of your breastsWith that white flag stuck in its flesh?It had been bitten by a vicious dogAnd kissed by William Tell.

And your golden hair like a golden coin,Your blue hair, your red hair—Oh! Your hair and your own dead loved ones and AmenAnd when, my love, did you slaughter that rooster of yours?

And your hand kissed by lay parishioners,Your stockings with their gracious smellCaught with a lasso like some aged reindeer…

And me turned on the third side,The way the dead turns in his graveAnd watches in the earth his wifeMaking love with two men of water.

And me, my love, poor me,A coin flipped in the air against bets by a finger,The dead the moment he takes the coin in his mouthTo cross the waters in a one-horse shay.

translated from the Romanian by Victor Pambuccian

The Execution

IThe pendulum clock ticks inside my bones.So what? I’ll throw my bones to the dogs.My love, don’t water your breasts with rat poisonI’ll grow again teeth and lips.The pendulum clock ticks inside my only suit,Impeccably ironed and brushed.It was raining onRose Street Nr 6With that funeral wheat porridge turned blueAnd with white poet meat.Whoever cries is dumb.Do you pity gramophones?Don’t cry.Don’t bury me,Leave me naked in the middle of the street,This dead body deserves to be hit by passing cars.

IIPendulum clock, beware of the poet!For he will tie you to a horseAnd will tie you to himself.He will beat the horse with the hairOf his dead lover.The poet will beat the poetWith the family deadIn alphabetical order.The horse will run to the king of dog catchers,The poet will run to the laboratory dog,And you, pendulum clock, willBreak apart, leaving two pieces,One of which will be pulled by the horseThe other by the poet,To be lead to the king of dog catchers,To be lead astray to the laboratory dog

And the king of dog catchers will judge youFor the birth of the dog catchersAnd the laboratory dog will judge youFor the death of laboratory dogs.And they will sentence youTo be finely ground in the poet’s hat,And the poet will grind you with his elbows,He will squeeze your juice with his teethUntil you will be like dust on furnitureUntil you will become like dust on bootsUntil you will be like dust on the dead.

translated from the Romanian by Victor Pambuccian

Hats Off

We attach so many wings to our heelsAnd so many dogs commit suicide for us.The jockey alone ends up mutilated,Hallowed, lynched,Like a Madonna caught in bedWith an old weightlifter.Yet we are smiling.Our hunchback fallsInto the garden of a pharmacist…Dogs that took their own lives, winged heels,And the pharmacist is burying the jar with rat poisonUnder the male and female soldier pair.And everything is well-balancedLike the extrapolated, long-time dead.So that’s how things are?Hats off,Hats off to myself,For I was born out of the adultery ofThe Madonna with a weightlifter.Hats off, hats off to myself,For I was born to cure leprosyBy spitting on it poem after poem.I was born to say thatThe dead man is dead that the boil is a boilThat the piano is butcheryThe way the sea is my mother,The way the clocks areThe tip of a cast iron...