Inversion of, no Question

For older poets Latin having learned

when rather in the sun they'd have been playing,

when rhymes were seeking they, never spurned

reversed of words the order from their saying.

Aback when taken by a thought though random,

as if composing in a tongue inflected

multiplicity without ends in tandem

together pieced be meaning can detected.

As in the mirror sees the subject th'object

perception of precise, himself reversed,

so on the page pursues with pen his project

last arrived at what conceived he first.

Whatever touches convoluted thought,

sense slips back on self, Baroque with, fraught.

*************

Craving

Concupiscence means having a little
Cupid inside each of us, even when
we’ve just been born, desiring what we’ve just
been jerked from, maybe, or the very first
fruits hanging to slake our thirst, which we had
never known before, back when we were in
the Garden where we had no needs, unless
our mother, the universe herself, did.

So now we’ve had to improvise techniques
from foraging to gardening to field
work to hydroponics to distilling
brandy from fruit juice and whiskey from grain
and sticky black resin from alkoloids
in flowers refined into heroin.

But what about the yearning for union
with the divine? the abnegation of 
the self, the body, the will – unless it’s
will that drives one to fast, ignore hunger
– or, better, to focus on that feeling
like a flame the chela gazes into,
subtly shifting, not too brilliant, a bit
of blue or even blackness near the wick.

Exempla abound: the nun who only
ate one consecrated wafer a week,
the guru who must have had chlorophyll
in his epidermis, living on air,
sunlight, and moisture that dripped in his cave.
The hiker who froze to death in winter.

This poem appeared in Orizont Literar Contemporan, Dec. 2009.

INSAŢIETATE

Concupiscenţa înseamnă să avem în noi
un mic Cupidon, chiar şi-atunci
când abia-am fost născuţi, cu dorinţa
să fi fost smuciţi poate. Sau ca
primele fructe coapte să ne-astâmpere setea
ce n-am mai cunoscut, atunci când eram
în Grădina unde n-aveam nevoie de nimic, doar dacă
mama noastră, universul însuşi, avea nevoie de ceva.

Aşa c-acum a trebuit să improvizăm tehnici
de la a săpa la a planta la a munci
pământul la a creşte artificial la a distila
coniac din suc de fructe şi whiskey din grâne
şi răşină neagră greţoasă din alcaloide
în flori rafinate în heroină.

Cum rămâne cu dorul de uniune
cu divinul? Cu abnegaţia sinelui, 
a trupului, a dorinţei – doar dacă nu cumva
dorinţa ne-ndeamnă la abstinenţă, la ignorarea hranei 

sau şi mai bine la surprinderea intensă a acelei senzaţii
precum o flacără spre care priveşte chela
foindu-se abia simţit, nu prea aprinsă,
cu mucul albăstriu şi chiar negru.

Exemple din belşug: călugăriţa
ce mânca o singură napolitană sfinţită pe săptămână,
un guru care pesemne c-avea clorofilă
în epidermă, care trăia cu aer,
cu soare, cu lâncezeala ce i se scurgea din căpăţână.
Alpinistul ce-a îngheţat iarna de viu.

Romanian version: Sînziana MIHALACHE
This version also appeared in Orizont Literar Contemporan, Dec. 2009.