At the “Bar of My Wound”
Rent from DeepDyve- At the “Bar of My Wound”
The dog came close and sniffed me all around.I let him taste my wound.
I let him. He tasted it. And grew even stronger.A stray dog. A fighting dog. He grew doggier.
He came in and sprawled on the counters as if entering hell.There inside my soul. The wine cellars of my blood. At the “Bar of My Wound.”
My girlfriend came close and sniffed me all around.“You’ve no idea what nonsense it babbles in its sleep, your wound.”
I got up and left her then and there. She became a cobweb between two coffees.Inside my soul. At the “Bar of My Wound.”
The devil came close and sniffed me all around.“I’ll found a theological institute in your wound.”
I prayed till my sweat glittered like a basket of memorial candles.Then God turned the Devil into a stuffed Devil. At the “Bar of My Wound.”
Where the back of a hand won’t knock the glasses aside.Where nobody don’t know nothing ’bout nobody’s soul inside.
Where sudden pity stabs you in the back. Under the window.Where the blackbird won’t sing. Nor the wind blow. [End Page 71]
Daniel Bănulescu, one of Romania’s most prominent writers today, is the author of the poetry collections I’ll Love You to the End of the Bed, The Ballad of Daniel Bănulescu, The Federal Republic of Daniel Bănulescu, and It’s Good to be Daniel Bănulescu. He has also authored many novels. His first play is Who Won the World War of Religions? (U of Plymouth P). His work has been translated into English and German, and he was a guest at the Poetry International Festival Rotterdam.
Adam J. Sorkin is a translator of contemporary Romanian poetry whose work has won the Poetry Society (UK) Prize for European Poetry Translation, the Kenneth Rexroth Memorial Translation Prize, and the Ioan Flora Poetry Translation Prize, among other awards. His most recent books include Ion Mureşan’s The Book of Winter and Other Poems (translated with Lidia Vianu), Liliana Ursu’s A Path to the Sea (translated with Ursu and Tess Gallagher), and Ioan Flora’s Medea and Her War Machines (translated with Alina Cârâc), as well as The Vanishing Point That Whistles: An Anthology of Contemporary Romanian Poetry (Talisman House).
Lidia Vianu has published literary criticism, including The Desperado Age: British Literature at the Start of the Third Millennium (Bucharest UP), Alan Brown-john and the Desperado Age (Bucharest UP), and British Desperadoes at the Turn of the Millennium (ALL Publishing, Bucharest), as well as two books of interviews, Censorship in Romania (Central European UP) and Desperado Essay-Interviews (Bucharest UP), a novel, translations, and three poetry collections.
