Like the Hungarian Lilac
.
.
Again we missed each other on this track,Â
Outran each other, or simply lacked synchronization,Â
Regrets are useless once you’ve passed your destination.
And still I wanted to call, come back!
You were cold and beautiful like the Hungarian lilac;
A birth timed from its start in reversion
We forcepped what we could in overexertion,
Until the moths choked the garden black.
.
Now blind and misunderstood, dear Galileo,
The expression in your eyes so labradorite,
Since I last saw you, they’re drenched in pyrite,
totally glaucoma blue –
Does it hurt to grow a halo?
Does it pain you?
.
.
The Pond
.
.
We shall, lit by friendly moonbeams,/Float within the magic ring –/May the winds through rushes rustle,/May the rippling waters sing!
MHAI EMINESCU
>
‘Water!’
a baby screamed at me, holding his father’s hand.
>
‘Oh my god they’re mating,’
said a pre-teen in my ear as he picked his nose,
I became the sullen child
who didn’t want to play,
briefly considered cutting him out of the poem.
>
But soon the azure dragonflies arrived,
the water lilies blushed on edge
in tones of Sunset Boulevard and Campfire.
Beneath the glaze,
they grew divine, unimaginable organs.
Snails caressed the roots in pirouette,
spun, taking out their secret parts
deftly and industriously, as they never would on earth.
I even found
the pots of Tophet, secondhand from Pompeii,
full of swaying lettuce.
>
The stiller I remained, kneeling on the banks,
the more my eyes penetrated this book of secrets,
and a copper-haired mermaid
plucking the water lilies
to make a bouquet for the dirt-floored room
rippled before me.
That sea-girl would not call for me:
I did not care that I snapped her veins,
that I hurt her.
Â
>>
Hymn
.
.
Ah, my Achilles’ heel is acting up again –
Should I wonder,
now that this premature body
is again so out of tune?
(like a broken Mandolin
in a buried Transylvanian village)
>
Should I wonder,
now that I’ve grown inside this premature body,
the emotional intensity of a spinster aunt
(married once, then quickly abandoned)
with a penchant for material possessions?
>
That aired out childhood feel,
as if the windows had been thrown open
and the sheets washed.
>
That aired out childhood feel
of finding a tree house on the banks of the river,
and crawling into it
not knowing where you are
but liking where you are –
is that what being alive is, then,
reading confessions tattooed on bathroom walls
or on wood?:
>
Andreas if you ever see this know that I loved you a lot
But you were never able to appreciate that. You made a fool out of me.
I hate you now.
>
Eduard and I will get back together someday!!!
>
So I lie on my back and squint a bit shy up at God
through the cracks in the boards:
the fear of losing and the fear of having,
life is all or nothing,
you can’t take care of an old lady
without staying by her side all the time
you
can’t
lose
the
moment
Andreea Iulia Scridon is a Romanian-American poet and translator. She studied Comparative Literature at King’s College London and is currently studying Creative Writing at the University of Oxford. She is editor at Asymptote Journal, E Ratio Poetry Journal, and The Oxford Review of Books.
