Translated from the Romanian by Olimpia Iacob & Jim Kacian
Narrated by Bill Wolak
Stay around you as long as you can and dream—
says to me
my guardian angel rising from among the mirrors—
invent yourself every minute
enjoy for existence exists!
(Death is only the woman that haughtily passes through
your poems)
So what if Nothingness buys
all your shares?
STAY AS LONG AS YOU CAN AROUND YOU AND DREAM
he says to me
you live among angels scoundrels and libraries
every day occasional martyrs (changing their masks eeeeeeeeeasily)
refresh your memory with their endless restraint
on the crosses
Nothing is to be done says my guardian angel to me
Shaking his fog aureole
Dress your void in illusions delude your own death
and SPEAK SPEAK SPEAK EVEN THOUGH
YOUR WORDS LIKE THE SEA FOAM PASS
THROUGH THE MOUTH OF THE DROWNED MAN.
Invent yourself every minute enjoy for existence exists.
Stay as long as you can around you and dream!
Daniel Corbu born April 7, 1953, at Târgu Neamţ, in Neamţ county, Romania. He graduated from the Faculty of Letters (Romanian-French) of the University of Bucharest. He is included in various anthologies of poetry at home and abroad, as well as in literary reviews from France, Belgium, Italy, Slovenia, Serbia, Germany, The Republic of Yemen, Hungary, Canada, and China. He is a member of the Writers’ Union of Romania and the recipient of many important literary prizes. He has been bestowed with the rank of Knight in the Order of “Cultural Merit.”
Olimpia Iacob graduated from the Faculty of Letters of the “Al. I. Cuza” University from which she earned a Ph.D. in 2000 with a dissertation entitled Translation Theory Applied to the Poetry of Nichita Stanescu. Her book-length translations include works in poetry by Cassian Maria Spiridon (translated with Jim Kacian), Gabriel Stanescu, Mircea Petean (translated with William Wolak) Daniel Corbu (translated with Jim Kacian) Marius Chelaru (translated with Gabriel Rosenstock), George Vulturescu (translated with Adam J. Sorkin). She is a member of the Writers’ Union of Romania.
Jim Kacian is founder and president of The Haiku Foundation (www.thehaikufoundation.org), a world-wide non-profit that seeks to archive the first century of haiku in the West, and to create new opportunities for its second; founder and owner of Red Moon Press (www.redmoonpress.com), the pre-eminent dedicated publishing house of English-language haiku in the world; editor-in-chief of Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years(W. W. Norton, 2013, https://wwnorton.com/books/Haiku-in-English/), the definitive work on the subject; author of more than a score of books of poetry, primarily haiku; and translator of another score of books of poetry, from Japanese and (especially) Romanian (with co-translator
