Timisoara: little voices whispering softly

----with thanks to Alexandra Grigorianu for checking my bad Romanian

Sometimes, a little lachyrmose
I hear the child of Piata Traian
the metallic wails of trams turning
faces gazing out the windows into me

Sometimes, as joyously as a summer afternoon
I hear the crickets singing joyously
the Bega flowing almost imperceptibly somewhere
as the heat fills the dusty streets
and it is too hot to make love too violently


Sometimes, lethargically, I am in the sufragerie
the listless heat outside like a distempered dog
the snoopy old ladies of Zona Dorobantilor
slying in wait for stirring, passings, comings
& I must provoke them daily!


Sometimes, the pretty young girl in the magasin
with her bronzed arms and gold-flecked teeth
flirts with me as I stammer in her native tongue,
Dati-mi va rog o sticla de Cola mare ?
& she would love the vermillion hues of reddening cheeks
as I slink back to the apartment
(Inca mai aud acele voci soptind incet)
little voices, little voices....

A Different Kind of Life

Do you ever have snatched little moments
at the apex of an afternoon
where the tremulous soul reaches out
to the threadbare strands of life
this one--the one you are not leading.

You went this way; you choose wisely, feeklessly
maybe it is security over ambition
sensibility over risk
as a mute witness to a bed of undeclared lovers
then, without warning
flickered dreamscapes of doppelgangers and their have lives come
to you
in the seering, unforgiving heat of afternoon.

Shivering with regret and incomprehension
this Bulevardul of unseeen agonies and missed opportunities
--some days Helsinki, somedays Timisoara--
others in some other lustrous city; music and inebriation
has us smiling so contently, the idea of you fully formed.

I am weeping, smiling and writing poetry again.....
& this doppelganger returns teasing me with pleasure futures.

27 January 2007