Centre for Romanian Studies

Poetry in Translation (CLVI): Marin SORESCU (1936 – 1996, Romania) – “Translation”, “Traducere”

Translation
Marin Sorescu (1936 – 1996)

I was sitting an exam
In a dead language
And I had to transIate myself
From man into ape.

I played it cool,
First translating a text
From a forest.

But the translation got harder
As I drew nearer to myself.
With some effort
I found, however, satisfactory equivalents
For nails and the hair on the feet.

Around the knees
I started to stammer.
Towards the heart my hand began to shake
And blotted the paper with light.

Still, I tried to patch it up
With the hair or the chest,
But utterly failed
At the soul.

(Rendered in English by Constantin ROMAN, London
© 2012, Copyright Constantin ROMAN)

First published in:
Encounter, December 1972
“Three Poems by Marin Sorescu”
by Constantin Roman & Timothy J.L. Cribb. (Cambridge)