blindness
Jesus Christ has never worn glasses
So as to keep
His sight
Out of the void.
To be able to shield his eyes
From the sands of the wilderness;
He has never worn glasses
And hasn’t seen myself
On my beckoning to him
About my intention to follow him:
To go after him into the mirrors of sleeping
Yielding and amazed and redeemed
Like one of his apprentices.
In my home, Jesus Christ has never stepped
To ask for lodgings
For a night at least;
He has never got in
For me to treat Him to a dinner
And to hand in to him the chalice
From which to drink his crucifixion to the lees.
Jesus Christ has never worn glasses
Otherwise He might as well have seen,
Had He worn –
My home with prison-like walls,
The Street of the poets
Fortuneless, deserted, obscure…
The Street of the poets
With en-spined white thorns
From his wreath;
The street of the poets
With acacia trees blossoming in winter even,
He might have seen
(had he worn glasses)
My friend’s dogs
Which I usually have a chat with
On the ledge of eternity
Each day
And particularly each night
He would have spotted my thoughts
Nightly, temperamental, ravaging.
But Jesus Christ has never worn glasses
He was not in the know beforehand, the poor being,
That one’s sight grows dim in time
Just as one’s love fades away in time
Just as one’s faith diminishes in time.
Jesus Christ has never spotted myself,
Whereas myself have never been able to take hold of his hand
And to tell him:
“Go after me, My Lord, into my kingdom!”
determinism
What would the stone have possibly turned into
unless the people had learned lapidation?
How would the rope have possibly availed itself,
unless the talion had crafted its bight?
How apparent would the water have possibly looked,
unless ships had got rotten
in its depths?
What would the fire possibly have turned into without any bonfire?
The venom what point would it have possibly made,
unless it had turned into stone the blood
baited by poison?
The Vesuvius how would it have possibly outlived its own destiny,
unless it had eternalized,
magmatically,
the cities Herculaneum and Pompeii?
But Poetry,
what would Poetry have turned into
without this soul of mine
which has been enthralling its banishment?
And moreover what would I have turned into,
unless in the unfathomable “Fiat Lux!”
God had gleaned
the entire poetry of the world?
the
healing of the blind man
‘El Principe de la Poesia they used to call me
and wide realms,
plentiful,
rank
they offered to my spirit.
Forests of words,
fields of syllables,
ponds of collocations,
mountains of images
were basking on my realms.
The blind beggar,
frail,
alone,
was staying so composed under the gateway
from the entrance to the church,
that you got in awe of his quiescence.
Insensitive,
people were walking by his side looking through him
and seldom, very seldom,
some believer, a more merciful one,
who was entering the church to pray
so as to receive, in his turn,
his slice of godly alms,
was dropping off to him,
in a tinkling way,
some coin
into the hat
which the blind man was raising,
brushing it off in a self-reconciled and bashful way
any time he heard footsteps.
His hands were frail, the blind man’s,
with narrow and sensitive palms,
with very long fingers,
impatient ones,
he might as well have become a piano player
or a painter
or an accoucheur
or an icon painter
hadn’t he been blind.
Those who were spotting him
by chance,
were sizing him up scornfully
and were hastily walking further on.
They didn’t know that he had been called El Principe de la Poesia
and that,
had they dropped off to him a line, a single line,
into his frail hands,
they would have healed him of blindness.’
(English
translation: Ligia Doina Constantinescu)
Author’s Bionote:
*Valeriu Stancu: A Knight of the
Order of Arts and Letters of the French Republic, the Romanian writer Valeriu
Stancu (born in Iași, Romania, on 27 August 1950) is also a publisher,
journalist and translator. Valeriu Stancu is one of the most widely read
contemporary Romanian poets. To date, his body of work (poetry, novels, short
stories, essays) comprises over seventy titles in his home country. He has also
published 35 books abroad. Valeriu Stancu has been translated into more than
twenty-five languages. His literary career has been marked by numerous
prestigious national and international literary awards.The prestigious French
literary journal ‘Phœnix’ (formerly ‘Sud’) dedicated one of its issues
published in 2023 (39) to him. He is the winner of the Mallarmé Grand Prix de
Poésie – 2025, for his collection of poems “L’INSOMNIAQUE FUSIL DE RIMBAUD”
(Éditions PHI, Luxembourg, 2024).
Jesus Christ has never worn glasses
So as to keep
His sight
Out of the void.
To be able to shield his eyes
From the sands of the wilderness;
He has never worn glasses
And hasn’t seen myself
On my beckoning to him
About my intention to follow him:
To go after him into the mirrors of sleeping
Yielding and amazed and redeemed
Like one of his apprentices.
In my home, Jesus Christ has never stepped
To ask for lodgings
For a night at least;
He has never got in
For me to treat Him to a dinner
And to hand in to him the chalice
From which to drink his crucifixion to the lees.
Jesus Christ has never worn glasses
Otherwise He might as well have seen,
Had He worn –
My home with prison-like walls,
The Street of the poets
Fortuneless, deserted, obscure…
The Street of the poets
With en-spined white thorns
From his wreath;
The street of the poets
With acacia trees blossoming in winter even,
He might have seen
(had he worn glasses)
My friend’s dogs
Which I usually have a chat with
On the ledge of eternity
Each day
And particularly each night
He would have spotted my thoughts
Nightly, temperamental, ravaging.
But Jesus Christ has never worn glasses
He was not in the know beforehand, the poor being,
That one’s sight grows dim in time
Just as one’s love fades away in time
Just as one’s faith diminishes in time.
Jesus Christ has never spotted myself,
Whereas myself have never been able to take hold of his hand
And to tell him:
“Go after me, My Lord, into my kingdom!”
determinism
unless the people had learned lapidation?
How would the rope have possibly availed itself,
unless the talion had crafted its bight?
How apparent would the water have possibly looked,
unless ships had got rotten
in its depths?
What would the fire possibly have turned into without any bonfire?
The venom what point would it have possibly made,
unless it had turned into stone the blood
baited by poison?
The Vesuvius how would it have possibly outlived its own destiny,
unless it had eternalized,
magmatically,
the cities Herculaneum and Pompeii?
But Poetry,
what would Poetry have turned into
without this soul of mine
which has been enthralling its banishment?
And moreover what would I have turned into,
unless in the unfathomable “Fiat Lux!”
God had gleaned
the entire poetry of the world?
‘El Principe de la Poesia they used to call me
and wide realms,
plentiful,
rank
they offered to my spirit.
Forests of words,
fields of syllables,
ponds of collocations,
mountains of images
were basking on my realms.
The blind beggar,
frail,
alone,
was staying so composed under the gateway
from the entrance to the church,
that you got in awe of his quiescence.
Insensitive,
people were walking by his side looking through him
and seldom, very seldom,
some believer, a more merciful one,
who was entering the church to pray
so as to receive, in his turn,
his slice of godly alms,
was dropping off to him,
in a tinkling way,
some coin
into the hat
which the blind man was raising,
brushing it off in a self-reconciled and bashful way
any time he heard footsteps.
His hands were frail, the blind man’s,
with narrow and sensitive palms,
with very long fingers,
impatient ones,
he might as well have become a piano player
or a painter
or an accoucheur
or an icon painter
hadn’t he been blind.
Those who were spotting him
by chance,
were sizing him up scornfully
and were hastily walking further on.
They didn’t know that he had been called El Principe de la Poesia
and that,
had they dropped off to him a line, a single line,
into his frail hands,
they would have healed him of blindness.’