GERMAIN DROOGENBROODT (edited by)
UNAWARE
Obviously, I’m not like
Any of those weavers of words
Who knit their suits and their careers
Their glory and their pride,
Although I mix with them
And they look at my words as if they were
sweaters:
“How well-dressed you are!” they say;
“That poem looks so good on you!”
Always unaware
That poems aren’t my clothes,
But my bones –
Painfully extracted
And placed around my flesh like a shell,
Following the example of tortoises
That manage to survive that way
For long and unhappy
Centuries.
ANA BLANDIANA, Romania, (Romania, 1942- )
© English translation by Paul Scott Derrick & Viorica Patea
©World Literature Today
Ana Blandiana, (din antologia ”La cules de îngeri”)
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