A Nibelung’s Dream
(published in Fantazii, 1909)
I dream of the
piles of gold
Guarded in the cave
below the Rhine
By Fafner, the
abominable dragon,
And to you, Wothan, I place a shrine.
My heart aches for
the treasure
And I must have it
at any price
I’m driven by
fatality
As Oedipus once was.
Show me the way to
the hoard
On the seven
strings of the lyre
O, Wothan, let a
handful of gold
Fall in the shadoof of love.
Give to me the
gold that kills
For long years
weigh on my bones
Since I crave for
the treasure
Like the dark Nibelungs.
The Rainbow
How tricky the light is on the ridge;
In the bat of an eye,
A rainbow has laid a bridge
To link your home to mine.
And a crazy idea I have in view,
—A poet’s mind can’t ditch—
To venture up to you
On this colorful bridge.
My forehead bathing in the rays,
To the high sky I’d go
And then, just when you least expect,
At once, I’d knock at your bow.
But when I wanted to go up, the beautiful
bridge
Collapsed; And now the clouds
Have drawn the curtain to the ridge:
God, what a crazy thing to dream.
Trance
You were singing a
strange song from the North,
A soft melody
that’s clear as ice;
And I was dreaming
of how sweet life would have been
If only we had a
house on the brink of a fjord.
Bright as marble
from top to bottom,
It would be all
white and reflected in water,
A mystery sitting
under a snow cloak
Like an albatross
nest rising on a rocky bluff.
The eternal
silence from the poles would fence it,
Everything would
seem frozen in time
Under sumptuous
coats of white velour
And we would be
the last envoys of life.
The great ships
would circle it in terror
And solemn, in
their place, on the calmness of our sea,
The glaciers would
send their blue squadrons
Floating
sailorless and flagless.
Thus my dream was,
but with the last chord
All vanished in
the night, but I didn’t tell you a thing,
And I piously kissed
this tiny little hand
Which tore down a
house on the brink of a fjord.
Ghosts
Sails spread, so
they can have a chance,
Thus come the
ships hurried by wind and cold,
But white ghosts
emerge from the sea
And run across the high pier.
Mercurial and
slender they run and howl,
Blocking the way
to the harbour
And other ghosts
rise to the phare in the tower
To ask for a dead man as a toll…
“The light, the
light, let’s turn out the light…
And once the
lamp’s dawn comes,
The queen will
come forlorn carried by the sea,
The Obsidian queen…” and they are up there,
Mercurial and
slender, step by step,
They climb to
reach the fire star;
Yet the star turns
its light on the ships,
And the ships can now cross safely.
They’re close and
the horns are now howling
The heavy anchor
is ready to fall
And all the
darkness and storm
Were vanquished by one single star.
And if…
And if branches knock
at the window (Eminescu)
And if the clouds
gather
On blue and clear
sky
It’s so I can tell
my pain
And relieve my
heart.
And if the woods
are empty
And the moon won’t
rise
It’s because from
now on you won’t come,
E’en by the end of
time.
And if branches
knock
Now, as they did
before,
It’s for from now
on you’re forgotten
And your memory is
gone.
And if my hand I
send slipping
On the lyre’s
stiff strings
It’s so I can cloud
for a moment
My amaranthine
sufferings.
And if I’m so
empty
And nobody knows,
It’s for this was
meant for me
And ‘tis how it
meant to be.
Ana Neagu was born in August 1999 in Bucharest, Romania. At present, she is a student at the Literary Translation MA Program of the University of Bucharest. So far, her translations of poetry have been published in Romanian magazines, such as Scriptor, Alternanțe, Caiete silvane, Actualitatea literară or Revista Română pentru Literatură și Artă. She’s currently working on numerous translation projects, including five collections of translations of poems by Mimi Khalvati, John Mole, Anne Clarke, Caroline Carver and Dimitrie Anghel.
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