Who am I? What is my place in cosmos?

by Nichita Stănescu


Without me it cannot be, proof that I am.
Without me it couldn't have been;
proof that I come from myself
that is, the self that was.

I am the one without whom it cannot be.
I am the one without whom it couldn't have been.
I am the one who witnessed
The existence of God.

I am the one who witnessed
the non-existence of God, for
I made God visible.

I am made by God, for
I made God.

I am neither good nor bad
I just am.

I am the utterance "I am"
I am the ear that hears "I am"
I am the spirit that understands "I am".

I am the absurd body of "I am"
and its letters.
I am the place where "I am" exists
and its bed, where it sleeps.

----
Romanian original: Cine sunt eu? Care-i locul meu în cosmos?

Finish

by Nichita Stănescu

I was running so fast that

an eye was left behind

watching me

shrinking, -

stripe first, line then...

Noble void traveling through nothingness,

fast non-extant part

traversing death.

----

Song

by Nichita Stănescu

It's an accident of my being:

and then, the happiness inside me

is stronger than me, than my bones,

which you crush in an embrace

always hurting, wonderful always.

Let's chat, let's talk, let's utter

long, glassy words, like the chisels that part

the cold river in the hot delta,

day from night, basalt from basalt.

Take me, happiness, high up, and strike my

forehead against the stars, until

my world long and unending

becomes column or something else

much taller, and much sooner.

How nice that you are, how wondrous that I am!

Two different songs, hurting, merging,

two colors that have never seen each other,

one very low, facing the earth,

one very high, almost broken

in the shivering, incomparable fight

of the miracle that you are, of the accident that I am.

----

Romanian original: Ce bine că eşti

The right to time

by Nichita Stănescu

You have a kind of paradise of yours

in which no words are said.

Sometimes an arm moves

and a few leaves fall ahead of you.

The oval of the face stays bent

towards a light coming from the side

with a lot of yellow in it and a lot of lazy,

with trampolines for the jumpers to death.

You have a sunny way

Of lifting cities like clouds,

and of moving the seconds always

to the South edge of the hour,

when the air turns mauve and cold

and the evening map edgeless,

and I can barely stay alive

breathing, with long eyes, images.

----

Romanian original: Dreptul la timp

I am a man alive

by Nichita Stănescu

(part 1 of 2)

I am a man alive.

Nothing of mankind is foreign to me.

I barely have time to wonder that I exist, but

I am always happy that I am.

I am never truly made

because

I have a better and better idea

about life.

I am bewildered by the difference between me

and the blade of grass,

between me and lions,

between me and the islands of light

of the stars.

Between me and numbers,

like between me and 2, between me and 3.

I also have a fault a sin:

I take seriously the grass,

I take seriously the lions,

the almost perfect movements of the sky.

And a casual cut of my hand

makes me see through it,

like through a lens,

the pains of the world, the wars.

From such an event

comes the understanding

that I have for Ulysses - and

the man with the sullen face, Dante Alighieri.

I could hardly imagine

a barren earth, moving

around the sun...

(Maybe also because there are in the world

such verses.)

I like to laugh, although

I rarely laugh, always having something to do,

or traveling on a raft, endlessly,

on the oval ocean of fantasy.

It's an unforgettable show,

to know,

to discover

the map of the expanding universe,

while watching

a childhood photo!

It's an old body of yours,

that you lost

and not even an ad, written

in big letters,

gives you a chance

to find it again.

----

Romanian original: Sunt un om viu

The light

by Lucian Blaga

The light I feel

rushing in my chest when I see you,

isn't it a drop of the light

conceived on the first day,

of that light so thirsty of life?

The void sat in agony

when lonely in the dark was floating and gave

a sign The Inscrutable:

"Let there be light!"

A sea

and a whirlwind of light

were made:

a thirst there was of sin, of quest, of yearning, of passion,

a thirst of world and sun.

But where dead is the blinding

light from back then -- who knows?

The light I feel rushing

in my chest when I see you - wonderful,

is maybe as the last drop

of that light conceived on the first day.

----

Romanian original: Lumina

Heaven's light

by Lucian Blaga

Into the sun I laugh!

I do not have my heart inside my head,

nor do I have brains in my heart.

I'm drunk with world and I am pagan!

But would my land yield

so much laughter without the devil's heat?

And would your lips bloom so much magic,

were you not troubled,

Saint,

by the warm lustfulness of sin?

Like a heathen I ponder and I ask myself:

Where does heaven get its -

light? - I know: It's from the flames

of hell!

----

Romanian original: Lumina raiului