words are embryos of some thoughts,
it must be said they were arbitrary were they were born
their calling as deep as the alphabet of time
in a preformed space it was already there
the force that keeps a me apart from we
my mother fed me with words day and night
in a time when the word Babel was so tall

is poetry a shortcut or a detour into the unthinkable?
a compromise with the death of language
we anesthetize the dawn getting rid of memory
we ventilate emotions through our muscles
but the Carnot cycle keeps spinning
an emotional engine escaping precision,  not questions
unsaturated images in our stories, an unruly body
suffused with misery and dreaming
I will write an endless poem till darkness exhausts itself  
as a diver who runs out of oxigen

when sand storms are triggered in my hands
black cloths cover the mirrors
I have died an unfelt death

I'm in no hurry,
I'll let time pass by.
Each second as it drops
Bit by bit erodes
Suffering.
I'll be patient.
Each wave that breaks
Is rasp to the rock.
On which I'm bound,
Each speck of rust
Thins the chain.
In just a millennium, or two,
The rock will become sand,
The iron links fine powder,
My bones calcium molecules
Dissolved in water,
Suffering nothing.

By Ana Blandiana, translated by Adam J. Sorkin

searching for beauty in
the pain
or at least the envelopes in which it arrives
I'm deep in debt from feeling too much
at this point, solvency will never come

I see my shadow standing still
on the white wall of an art museum
it weighs on me that this is something I cannot undo

at what point of taking something apart does it
become something different?
because I’m pretty sure I’m someone else
at least, I’m not myself

“how to drown yourself”
a white quilt
suspended
unknown, undrown
bottom two corners sagging
top two pulled taught

tangled air knotting itself throughout my lungs
interwoven with my vital organs like threads of unconsciousness
my breath is never left
undone
unknown, undrown

“to allow yourself to be forgiven,
to find a way forward,
to follow yourself back”
three phrases—
stitched in red
on three white flags
“the future is a hopeful past”
I lowered each to half staff

unknown, undrown
two people seems to be the right amount
people puddle, standing
unknown, undrown

light lingers on stones
I love to be a spectator
women's hair hallucinates sunflowers
time is hitting the walls
today our ribs/smiles don't hurt
these pavements are the custodians
of wind's secrets
our eyes see without effort
a strange divination possesses this journey
from egg to coffin

light travel through us as if through
an ocean of bones
a poem dreams its exile into words
the trees let us see the seeds of time
we confuse happiness
with the boutique of dreams
and that's alright
some magic was saved on Noah's ark

springtime smells of women's hands
a young man conjures an intact eden
silence is grinding the air
at the end of things, the root of water

you escalate my depth
a pain without pain, an effortless mirror,
this flame trapped in the depth of flesh
my body is a quiet urn for
the ash of the days without an inexplicable
you