Poems by Ion Deaconescu 

1.
The Drop of a Thought
 
The bad news is usually hiding
In a tear or a letter
Or in the gulf of the soul,
Which is not recovering himself
From everything that he hears and sees.
At a table, in the “Balzac coffee” coffee shop
I’m reading in the “Berliner Zeitung”
That Gunther Grass’s pen
Will bud high in the sky,
There, on a cloud,
Called by God
To keep him company.
The coffee cup is trembling
In the hands of Paul T.
And seems to be an unhealed wound;
Constantin B.
Is breaking the bolts of the silence:
“Our poets are dying, my God,
And they are turning into statues of air.”
In the “Balzac coffee” coffee shop
​Time has stopped,
And the drop of a thought
Is begging for a little love.

2
Letter Without An Addressee
 
It’s raining, the wind is blowing, it’s cold,
The words have started to tremble
On the page stained by an unseen fear,
And the hand seems to be a branch
Without leaves or sap.
I would’ve liked to write a letter home,
To my mother, to my father,
But this summer has passed too
And I did not have time for two or three phrases.
And they are still waiting at the entrance,
But the postman is not coming anymore,
And their soul has already left,
From their body with no shade or flesh,
And their clothes have become larger and larger.
It’s raining, the wind is blowing, it’s cold,
The letters are falling from the blank page
Like the leaves of the mulberry tree during fall.
Letter without an addressee.

Translated by Veronica Lungu and Ines Cercel

1
​Picătură de gând
 
Picătură de gând
Veștile rele se ascund, de
obicei, Într-o lacrimă ori literă
Sau în prăpastia sufletului,
Ce nu-și mai revine
De câte aude și vede.
La o masă, în cafeneaua „Balzac cofee“
Citesc în „Berliner Zeitung“
Că stiloul lui Gunther Grass
Va înmuguri în cer,
Acolo, pe un nor,
Chemat de Dumnezeu
Să-i țină de urât.
Cana de cafea tremură
În mâinile lui Paul T.
Și pare a fi o rană nevindecată
Iar Constantin B.
Sparge zăvoarele
tăcerii:
,,Ne mor poeții, Doamne,
Și se prefac în statui de aer’’
În cafeneaua ,,Balzac Cofee’’
Timpul s-a oprit,
Iar o picătură de gând
Cerșește puțină iubire.

2
Scrisoare fără destinatar
 
Plouă, bate vântul, e frig,
Cuvintele au început să tremure
Pe pagina întinată de-o teamă nevăzută,
Iar mâna pare a fi o ramură
Fără frunze și sevă.
Aș fi vrut să scriu o scrisoare
Celor de acasă, mamei, tatălui,
Dar a trecut și vara aceasta
Și n-am avut timp de două-trei fraze
Și ei tot așteptă la poartă,
Dar poștașul nu mai vine
Și sufletul deja le-a plecat
Din trupul fără umbră si carne,
Iar hainele le-au devenit tot mai largi.
Plouă, bate vântul, e frig,
Literele cad de pe pagina albă,
Precum frunzele de dud, toamna.
Scrisoare fară destinatar.

Ion Deaconescu was born in Tirgu Logresti in the Gorj County, Romania. He graduated at the Faculty of Letters at the Bucharest University and earned his PhD at the Department for Linguistics and Foreign Literature. He has been teaching literature at the universities of Bucharest, Craiova, Belgrade, Novi Sad, and Skopje. Having made his debut as a poet in 1968, he is the author of many poetry collections, the latest being The Grace of Memories (2016), as well as of books of essays. He has won multiple international poetry awards. His poems have also appeared in book form in translation to Italian, Hungarian, Turkish, Macedonian, and Serbian. In addition, he is the author of many analytical studies, reviews, and theoretical essays published in many different countries. He is a member of the European Academy of Science and Arts from Salzburg, of the Academy of Science, Arts and Letters from Paris, and of the Academy of Science of Republic of Moldova. He is the President of the International Academy Mihai Eminescu and organizes the week-long World Poetry Festival “Mihai Eminescu” every year in Craiova, Romania. ​

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