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Poetry

L’apparition

By Mariana Marin
Translated from Romanian by Julian Semilian

One day the Great Theme will arrive,
opening the windows,
it will sit down at our table,
will drink the intact wine,
will shake us to the core.
The most beautiful Mediterranean civilization
will have by then long flung itself in the sea;
while the thirteen months of the Ethiopian calendar
will have long set on fire our Flemish obscurity.
One day the Great Theme will arrive
the very image of a child in its mother-of-pearl-like
placenta
while we will take to the swamps,
will rejoice over the vision of a horizontal (universal)
ooze
swallowing the surrealist slumber that still protects us.
And the reason’s insomnia gives birth to monsters,
-the ooze will whisper.
And the redeeming hour in which the poem writhes;
and the young desert in the still glowing cinders;
and the euphoria of these open arteries
where I, the ooze will whisper . . .
One day the Great Theme will arrive.
It will perhaps find us reciting a few passages
from Gabriela Mistral.
Behind it the wind
will continue
to quake
your white shirt
my fingernails
glowing like red roses

English

One day the Great Theme will arrive,
opening the windows,
it will sit down at our table,
will drink the intact wine,
will shake us to the core.
The most beautiful Mediterranean civilization
will have by then long flung itself in the sea;
while the thirteen months of the Ethiopian calendar
will have long set on fire our Flemish obscurity.
One day the Great Theme will arrive
the very image of a child in its mother-of-pearl-like
placenta
while we will take to the swamps,
will rejoice over the vision of a horizontal (universal)
ooze
swallowing the surrealist slumber that still protects us.
And the reason’s insomnia gives birth to monsters,
-the ooze will whisper.
And the redeeming hour in which the poem writhes;
and the young desert in the still glowing cinders;
and the euphoria of these open arteries
where I, the ooze will whisper . . .
One day the Great Theme will arrive.
It will perhaps find us reciting a few passages
from Gabriela Mistral.
Behind it the wind
will continue
to quake
your white shirt
my fingernails
glowing like red roses

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