*(Translations from Romanian by Diana Manole and Adam J. Sorkin)
Sisyphus. Black
You pile chiselled lines on top of each blow
given or received,
metaphors or quotations, learned ironies or images
that bleed English, French, German,
and ejaculate Latin.
“An erudite in the Renaissance style,”
all say about you,
although the Renaissance put all your kind in chains
for profitable centuries.
Soon
you’ll become a man made entirely of words,
a black Sisyphus,
trying to carve his place in the history book
without starting revolutions,
blowing up airplanes,
or killing women of every colour
to wolf them down
piece by piece
roasted slowly over the stove’s flame.
You try to retrieve your laughter in the gap
between two screams of agony –
panthers, gazelles, and people skinned alive by drunk
South Carolina farmers
for the sake of scientific experiments–
“What colour would the flesh be under black skin?” –
and the desire to find one more reason
to party
in the name of the long-lost Queen.
“A coal-black crow like all the rest,” grunt
stone-deaf men who pass you by,
squinting.
Words in all languages and colours wriggle
on your fleshy lips
like maggots on thousands
of rotting corpses
that you gather to carry on your back
from the African savannahs.
The flesh-eating bacteria devour your heart
just because you happen to exist.
First Lesson. On Pain
Once in a while you get frightened
like that time
when your father pushed your hand into
the flame on the kitchen stove
more out of curiosity than to teach you
a lesson.
You were three or four, just wanting to play,
but he decided it’s never too early
for a boy to become a man.
You forgot to scream, amazed at
the white blisters full of water
blossoming
on your coppery skin.
Pain came much later
when the kid next door was the first to cast
a stone
without any awareness of sin.
(Jesus had gone off to wander somewhere
in the Middle East,
helplessly gaping at women beheaded
in the middle of the road
for a mere glance upon a stranger
or a pair of sunglasses with red frames.)
The neighbours’ boy had blonde hair and blue eyes
like a cherub
in a Renaissance painting.
He looked at you
as if you belonged to him
and shouted a word
you were yet to learn:
“N***er!”
Some thirty years later she also shouted
and turned her white cheek as if you were
about to hit her,
forgetting
that she was still singeing through you
with each breath,
one hand liberating you from your darkness,
the other
pouring kerosene over your body
which still shivers
like a teenager’s at his first love
whenever he catches sight of her.
“N***er!” she yelled
flicking the lighter,
detonating.
