Magda Carneci [Romania]

 

An Annunciation
 
Just as
with delicate, minuscule signs
—the flutter of a fish’s fin, the twitch of a butterfly’s antenna-
a fetus announces its presence
gently, as an ambiguous hint, a phantasm
      in the womb of a lonely and    patient woman
 
So you, too,
slowly     with faint, humble signals
and intimations - a choral murmur among the leaves, a lightning flash
in sleep,   red finger traces on the sky’s belly -
have allowed me to feel you   closer and closer,  more overwhelming
      yet unimaginably gentle
 
As if
I were not the baby still taking form
      in your cosmic placenta, a blind worm in metamorphosis
                  in transfiguration in the depths of the universal uterus
but you,
through a mysterious reversal, were inside me, in this world,
                                                a germ
long patient   waiting   to bud
and sending its signs   vast and anonymous
                  through the amniotic liquid that surrounds us all,
                  through the terrestrial aquarium
in which I float blindly.
 
In the museum of clocks and watches
like a pregnant caretaker too scatterbrained to give birth
I get lost among histories and epochs, among theories and systems,
I dust, put the books in order, repair the mechanisms,
sometimes glancing   absentmindedly   out the window    
      I see carmine clouds         in optic glory,
light, sky, terrestrial aquarium,   that never stop trying
      to show me something, to reveal something
                                                            to remind me of you
 
As if
not I    but you     in this world
      were a fragile, incomplete germ
scattered among the leaves    in the sunset    and aurora borealis,
      an unconceived son,    cosmic fruit of my being
                  delicately touching me 
                          both within and without
 
I in you,    you in me
I an infant in you,    you an infant in me
                          to whom I must give birth
 
not on the outside
                          but inside
                                                            and thus set free. 
 
(Translated by Alina Carac & Adam J. Sorin) 
 
 
An Oceanic Suffering
 
If only we hurt, if only our bodies hurt badly
  each time somebody were 
stabbed, mutilated, shot near us
– or on remote continents.
 
If only we felt the walls of our homes
  tumbling down when a shell hit a village in Ukraine
and wrecked its little houses
  leaving behind blood-splattered bedlinen.
 
If only we suddenly went blind when an explosion blew up
  tall apartment buildings, stadiums and cathedrals
turning to ashes everything that could burn,
  our sight as well.
 
And the conflagration rose above the Earth
  and lighted all the nooks and crannies of the world
to present us just as we are:
 
These absurd critters, monstruous creatures,
  phantoms, unfeeling and deaf,
seeking justification.
 
If only our vileness, our fear, cowardice,
  irresponsibility, and connivance
hurt us physically, bone-deep
  when thousands of children died in Gaza.
 
If an oceanic suffering engulfed us,
  and all our cells, in unison, were afflicted with
the putrid taste of death
  that enshrouds the battlefields and the common pits
 
where we recognize our faces on all the corpses -
maybe then we would AWAKE.  
 
(translated by Alina Carac & Adam J. Sorkin) 
 
 
Glossa
 
Any flesh, even the most sweeping, fallow of the world
Irradiates from itself to the outside:
Nothing is definitely limited. Our auras are enmeshed
and vibrate golden and unheard:
Nothing ends without a consequence:
the cold waves of the river mix welcomingly
with my hot waves and together, they flow to the sea:
all begins and finishes and begins endlessly.
 
Genesis and the apocalypse happen both in the Moment:
Each moment is a small final judgment:
Inside I hold together birth, eternity and death:
genesis and the apocalypse happen continually inside me:
paradise and hell ceaselessly paint my internal cathedral.
 
The fetus that I was embraces the corpse that I will be:
The light which I will become:
the joy of the beginning kisses the joy of the ending.
 
From now on I salute the cosmic dust which will embrace me someday:
even now I consume tenaciously from the universal smile.
 
When my passion doesn’t burn all the things around me
They all burn me, ravenously:
At times I dissolve in their luminous vibration
 at other times they change entirely inside me.
At times I transmute into a man and you transmute into a woman:
we are already old and we are still children.
Sometimes I forget I am human
and suddenly I am the whole World.
 
Although, much as I thirst for it
I won’t be
I won’t be
I won’t be
 
(Translated by Alina Carac & Adam J. Sorkin) 
 

Author’s Bionote:
 
*Magda Carneci is a poet, prose writer, art essayist and translator born in Romania. After the Revolution of December 1989, she became actively involved in the political and cultural Romanian scene. She got her Ph.D. in art history in Paris in 1997. A cultural activist, she was president of GDS (Group for Social Dialogue, a group of well-known Romanian intellectuals) and of PEN Romania. She is a member of the European Cultural Parliament (ECP) and of Parlement des Ecrivaines Francophones (PEF - Francophone Women Writers’ Parliament). She has published many books of literature, cultural essays, and art history. Her poems have been translated into numerous languages and appeared in many anthologies. Some of her volumes of poetry in Romanian were translated into English (Chaosmos, White Pine Press 2006; A Deafening Silence, Shearsman Books, 2017). Her feminist novel FEM has been translated into French (Non Lieu, Paris, 2018) and English (Deep Vellum, USA, 2021) and was a finalist at the PEN America Translation Award 2022. In 2019 she received the Legion of Honour from the French State.