In Sad, Old Europe
Written by Daniel Corbu
Translated from the Romanian by Olimpia Iacob & Jim Kacian
Narrated by Bill Wolak
Therefore,
I knew that I was only a small efflorescence
Of nothingness, an ephemeral protuberance
of the void
like a day longer than a century
from a restless eon of overlapping
strokes of time.
I was born late in a sad, old Europe
painted like an actress for her last ball.
I was born late
fated to read the book of events word for word
In the sacerdotal air of my mornings.
It was late.
With a stone sharp as death’s look
Cain killed Abel
Noah’s ark found its end
on mount Ararat.
With a big noise Sodom and Gomorrah
crumbled
and the implosion of the sin’s flower lasted
in the corridors of the world.
Jesus wrote the cryptic word left unsolved
and shared it with the four winds through
a thousand hurricanes
Don Quixote overcame the windmills
of Europe
and Hamlet died
announcing those fond of breaking news
that something is always rotten in the state of Denmark.
The Vedas─sweet laments of the being who encouraged
illusions─were carried on a rickshaw
to the courts of the translators from Munich and Manchester.
with a victory devoid of arms.
Beethoven wrote The Ninth Symphony─Ode to Joy.
Finally, Robinson Crusoe left
the wild island.
The Greeks experienced gods’ fatigue
Raskolnikov had just hidden the hatchet
Stained with the blood of the crime.
Somewhere in Kilimanjaro
Hemingway’s rifle fired its last bullet
And after one hundred years of solitude
friend Marquez uttered his farewell declaration.
I was born in a sad, old Europe.
It was late.
In vain I keep on giving meaning to the vain.
My dreams have become a garden of Eden adorned with wonder.
Every day I weave something new into the lace of a tempest.