There was no one to tell him what to do.

The shovels’ dull thud mixed with the steady patter of rain.

“Little lady, do you have a craving for cozonac?”

As a child, he suffered from the disease called humility. Poor man!

To make haz de necaz is to transform tribulation through the play of wit.

As they wearied, the whips would fall from their hands.

Then, for the first time, the strange thought occurred to me that our carpet frame had become a gallows.

What was better: to lie in the ground with a uterus or to live above it without one?

He’s so drunk he can hardly stand and he’s bruised all over.

We had all heard rumors about an album of naked girls, from which guests invited to a tea in the City could choose the ones they liked.

Dead swans on purple waters

“Danse avec moi under the stormy sky”                                Daniel LanoisDanse…

I walk toward the mill / To meet my quiet father

Father went to war. Then he died in the war. When our neighbors found out the news, they looked at us, Mother and me, with pity.

how many words do we need to make ourselves clear?

what would the savior have looked like / grown old?

I carried everything I had. It wasn't actually mine.

Perhaps I am one of the last who must live out to the end the destiny of the Jewish spirit in Europe.

I don't blame my parents for what happened next, they had enough troubles.

today I see / as I can't be seen

outside, lonely horses / shod with crescent moons and crosses

you're deaf as a log

The bears are tame, I broke them in myself.

An expansion of plants with water fingers

And I felt your pure and sad soul / As you'd feel the moon float in silence

Feverish, tense, you try to calm your rapid breathing.

In the seed of lilies / I buried you serenely

House under construction with dried branches, like spiders, in your scaffolding

Then, without ever knowing why, trees raise their naked arms to the King of the Sky.

The eyes of the Roma know exactly when the earth's heart begins to stir deep down at spring's root, reviving the shoots of grass and the buds of trees until the green sap bursts with love before the Sun's eyes.

Life is full of unexplainable things. But, moreover, it is full of me. To be better heard, I repeat, ladies: it is full of me. From this you will deduce that I too am one of those unexplainable things,…

What a pity you don't feel / How the trees bow to kiss you

From the trees planted by dusk in our rooms that were set on firewe’ll slowly untie the glass pigeons, that eternal foliage;they’ll grow rustling on our shoulders and arms, and there will…

Sun in your eyes, craving on your lips

On the intergalactic station Malmorius, Jaspar the Terriblefeverishly prepares for the decisive attack.Who knows where in the Central Desert of Athyria, Commander Z.checks the converters one by one, the…

Author’s noteErnesto Sábato’s novel Abaddón el exterminador (1974) includes a dense epistolary chapter addressed to a virtual fellow writer, which begins “Dear, distant young man…”…

To think it's the right moment now to talk to me in tears, / to go barefoot there, so you be told what's in store for us:

Don't be afraid. I'll be here by your side, and I'll give you the gift I promised.

Chemical. / Fire grass. / Retching.

Good man, my friend Mynheer . . . / Banished one day far from home

And the redeeming hour in which the poem writhes; / and the young desert in the still glowing cinders;

At times reality catches me in the middle of the act / and stuffs down my throat its five-cornered red stars.

I could have been your refuge. I could have killed you. Yes you-

You are forbidden to me. I love you but my flesh turns black upon me / a block of coal pure useless alive

As shadows turn to light, so was Gabriel's sadness turning constantly into something else.

There was one more reason to get worried: for some time now, her handwriting had been shrinking, reticulated like oil paint applied on a frozen surface.

If only I knew how to lose my shadow on time / if only I knew how to point myself out with my finger,

The chief was about to run after him and give him a beating, but Lia stood in his way and said: He's underage.

The violence / the guilt with which I love you thus derive from that distance

Anyone's death is a great tragedy.

“The preeminent voice among contemporary Romanian women novelists.”—Norman Manea

I was asked to join Securitate.

Two Romany boys were sent, / sent across the great sea.

The pond of your breastsMy pillow shall be;Your eyes my moonsLike silver shine.Wait, my girl!Don’t go away:What if I will not see you,Ever again?

The roulette with three bullets greased inside the chamber fuses in my mind with the events that followed.