“The Dream” (English translation)
I dreamed I was on a strange shore that was
beaten to a blush by sun and wind,
and in this invention of
loneliness was I barely discernible
on a beach so indifferent to
me
and to the sun
and to the wind.
It was in a grey hour
whose moment marked itself
against my profile in opposition to the passing
of time;
I don’t know anymore
precisely when I realized that
my shadow had been missing
but as I felt with my hand
the sand was cold at her last sojourn.
All hope then crumbled into
grains of quicksand
into which my soul, heavy with
passion slipped away,
and I understood how small is
man
and how great is silence when you
can hear the rattling of your own bones.
I awoke, finally, swaddled in a
shroud woven as though by a
merciful spider, from the spindle of
forgetting
conscious with every blink of my eyes
that burned with sleep
and wind
and sun that any movement would collapse me
into salt and ash.
I felt my frail breaths through the
tightening and loosening of the
cloth that began to tear from this profound release;
I sensed myself so close against the
breast of neant that the space I began to fill
with my pathetic, withered form
was not part of the molecular plane of time’s movement.
I was embraced and yet not integrated
in this place damned by
the sun and
the wind
and
my soul sequestered in this forgotten beach.
Where once I was spiteful of tears that
fell as though for no reason,
where I was once spiteful of all the love
that was contiguous with my body and being when I
loved you,
I am now spiteful of this forsaken spot
that mocks me with the contradiction of my
existence.
I fell asleep.
I fell asleep without struggle or remorse,
rocked by my bones that beat like the
sound of the toacă towards midnight,
and I dreamed I wrote your name in the sand
and the wind slowed,
and the sun left off,
and the swaddling began to melt in
muscle and meat and nerves upon me like a
living
cipher.
The waves approached this strange shore
resurrected by the sun
and the wind,
like regrets,
and I understood how small is the pain
of sorrow, and how great
is need, when you can still cry beyond death.
And it was then I wept a tear—
a single, hot tear that turned the sand to
a glass bottle where it fell; and into it I poured
the sleep
and the dream
and the death of this
shore,
this shore so indifferent to me
the sun
and the wind.
I hurled it toward the horizon, toward you,
toward the west,
and the farther the sea carried it, the smaller this
cursed space became, until my soul
long buried, rose toward the sun.
After, I awoke on a strange shore,
beaten to a blush by
the sun and
the wind,
and I found your name written in the sand.
I sat down beside it, and fell asleep
and dreamed that you once loved
me.