Dumitru D. Ifrim, a jurist, essayist, translator and award winning Romanian poet. He was the vice-chairman of the Romanian Society of Haiku 1993, a member of the Romanian Union of Writers, member of the International Law and International Relations Association, and once was the Director Counsellor at the Senate of Romania. The Author of many books such as «The Plum Line», «The Book of the Roses», «Parallel World», «Shadow and Light», to name a few.
Turning in your light—
A same stiletto tries
My soul.
Even if all my colour are well-founded,
How draw it
From my soul
When the canvas of the time
A crust so thick is
That the knife and diamonds
Hardly can scratch it?
Your boots—
O, how many times I also returned home
And set them
In their corner
With the same meekness
Soothing them.
They, my only friends
Who silently are waiting for me
At the entrance!
Why do you not sleep
You, the child of the light?
Who always cast you among us?
Why do you live in our anxiety?
I make a resolve to take you with me
At the end of that sea
Where fever-hearted Annabelle Lee is waiting for.
The Others
You, the ones who from love
Like the angels or more heavenly
In my soul, are as a floating flower…
It’s not necessary the saints in the world to be
But just to have the people their high of power!
Oh, why not spiral in the logos of deed
like Vincent Van Gogh in his colour?
And in part always, always undivided—
And without escape, saved by the Father.
The cypresses and ocean— urchins only—
Some in the air, some in the water—
And the dream, and the yellow sun melancholy
And my neighbor, more and more brotherly
You are so very near relations
That sometimes only you are
And I’ve lost myself, I’ve forgotten for your need—
What happy to be the other!
When You Have Lighted Yourself
When you have lighted yourself
in the world
you have already burned down in a flash
You have revived
from your own ash—
Ah, how steps as a long flight
in the open sky
And what the light
beyond of any door, it is ay!
The Word Gathered As A Holy Water
It is possible the river beds
that I see in the depth
to find their rest somewhere in a sea,
unknown yet—
I see on its bottom
tables with unknown marks.
Like in a dream I distinguish
a word— but when I try to pronounce it
my lips are silent.
I would like to write it
but my hand
doesn’t know to write it.
I say this word with my eyes
but to receive it
nobody is.
And yet, the tablet there is
on the sea bottom
and it plays in a strange light
and reveals its word.
I lean to gather it—
I’d like to drink it
as a holy water.
Like An Ocean Evaporating
Where do you in me come from, spring running,
Beginning wave of the springhead time,
Wave of yond, genuine fond undying
beyond the time belt and the brine?
What harmony gave you, full of fruits
from my simple life turned into the air art?
Is it the falling word, absolute
to the silence and to the rose heart?
Where do you come from dream cell
that for a second you’re slow-acting,
and then anew lost in the sky well
like an ocean evaporating?
Moon Beauty Singer, I’ve Forgotten To Ask Thee
Moon beauty singer, I’ve forgotten to ask thee,
If you hear the blow of the wind in my tower
And how one of my old folk at home, with the sea
On the shore murmurs the sough of wind flower?
Do you hear how the bulwarks in their blinding
Have a same voice like the night birds without lid?
And don’t you see in our time childhood thing
Full of white, like a birthday of a kid?
All these you have, when we are like a single dove,
Receive them, like you give me your ether love.
John
He left home at dawn—
In the nest under the eaves
swallows were at the end of their sleep.
He took the way going in the life
on a simple path.
He has a lively stepping and a pure heart.
He didn’t look back
But searching of the heart came soon.
When he passed beyond the hill
very much he would have liked to return home,
to stay for another on the veranda—
Does he not too young to leave home?
And how will the left ones fend for themselves?
His stepping slowed down.
The power of a thought pulsates in him—
he will return home village
but in the other part of the earth’s sphere.
–
Poems translated into English by Clelia Ifrim from the book «The Plum Line», 2004.
