LEO BUTNARU

 

Disco Elegy

 

                                        Margarita realized that

                                        She’s flying at a fantastic speed.

                                                              Mikhail Bulgakov

 

Night, moon – a vinyl disc with

33,5 rotations per minute playing

The sad waltz of the flying woman. It’s

farther than

the power of our sight,

the power of our hearing

yet

even from out there she recognizes this city – one

from the beginning of the XXth century

in which the trill of the nightingale is heard

at its very center.

 

Over the high and flat roofs,

like aerodrome runways

the dusk is like coffee

that steams

at the edge of which

tremble the burned lips of the neon publicity

Only in the old and narrow street the tram

still brings light, seldomly,

from its windows, in a blink of an eye…

   In that street

Margarita gave and received as a gift

her first kiss.

              How she felt the world then!

Tears of

joy wet her cheeks and now

when she carries on her lips

the echo of that revelation – shattered dream,

                                       unseen dream.

(Unreachable the past?

But maybe the river can be crossed like the

Middle Ages…)

 

Soft soaring, soft soaring…

In the deep silence

where, as her blood trickles, pouring clearly

from her shoulders  - risen

like the eternal shine of the stars over her head

in the clear sky above…

 

Soft soaring. The city is below

Too low.

                      Not here anymore, far in the Universe

Heart

do not be a solitary island, sing,

flying woman.

 

The Ensign Rilke

 

Revived in renunciation

I climb over my own head – from there

There is a better view – from there

I can dive into myself, into the subliminal

Doing circles, where inside of me, in my nature that realizes

The state of absurdity yet as a limitation of its fullness

That not even the absurd can be definitive

Omnipresent (among others be it subliminal)

 

If you can withstand the darkness of your own depth

Dive! Your consciousness trembling

Reinvigorating it, spreading it in corollas of waves

Creating the necessary polychrome-semantic

The seekers-in-the-mystery

(and allowance?)

 

I climb exposed to vertical wanderings

And from above I see the ensign Rilke

Galloping through the immense field of his own German-Austrian

Poetry (I almost said Romanian-Bessarabian)

As language and Universalia, as geography

That's why I make the conclusion that climbing on the top of your

Head

You see the others more clearly and – importantly

Even the important (imported) ones

From the point of view of the polisher of lenses

Meaning

Of the spirit – the world as volumetric space ship of the

Fullness-emptiness (,) empty-fullness grave-cenotaph – that

The notion

Is just this one – impulse of philosophical seeking

All the others being nothing but accessories-combustions the anti-

Sleep

Which confirms that the present discourse is not mere

Rambling of the absurd – the combustion of the delight of becoming

Through

Climbing on the top of your head and

Of the others, your fellows, some of them being

Grandiose as the ensigns

 

Donator To All

 

We all have to see

Sometimes

How it becomes thinner

And stretches immeasurably

The last strip of sunset – relaxed

As the arm from which

It seems like

For mortals

God donates blood.

 

Translated From Romanian By: Marcel Gherman

 

LEO BUTNARU

 

LEO BUTNARU: Was born in Negureni, Orhei County, in the Republic of Moldova 5 January 1949. Is a writer from Moldova and Romania. Licensed in journalism and philology from the University of Moldova (1972). Activated in the periodical press, from editor to chief-editor: “Tinerimea Moldovei”, “Literatura si arta”, “Moldova”. Debuted with the book of poetry Aripa in lumina (Wing in light)(1976). In 1977 becomes member of the Writers’ Union of USSR. In the same year is discharged from his position at newspaper “Tinerimea Moldovei” (in spite of promoting for publication an arcticle about M. Kogalniceanu, which transgressed the imperial-communist ideological line). Member of the Writers’ Union of Romania (1993). Founding member of the PEN Center of Moldova. Between years 1997-2005 – president of Chisinau Branch of the Writers’ Union of Romania. Member of Council of Writers’ Union of Romania. Author's books appeared in France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Poland, Serbia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Tatarstan, Ukraine. Multiple prizes of Writers’ Union of Moldova, Writers’ Union of Romania Prize (1998; 2015) and the National Prize of Republic of Moldova (2002), the Prize of the Directing Committee and the Council of Writers’ Union of Romania (2008).