Carmen Firan
(Romania-USA)
The Old Angelic Language
in every dream I speak a different language
and in every language words have a different color
blind dreams rise from their foreheads
inflated on the purple horizon
from all I said in my lives before and to come
there remain only the flight path, the wing’s whisper
the island where I took refuge
free inside so many walls
on which I scratch neither hearts or love-words
but signs in the language I speak while asleep
a dialect of Old Angelic still useful for crossing borders
I have a vocation for happiness
a sort of unconscious facility
at making an ally of the caretaker of dreams
who’s always ready to lend me the silk cocoon
in which words sneak past customs
intimate objects I carry with me undeclared
nothing’s to be done about my golden dowry
dead languages yield just the powdery dust of stars
the banquet
at the great banquet
we’re served ahs
in Chinese porcelain and Bohemian crystal
everywhere a festive clink, an air of celebration
on the tip of our tongues we try a morsel of treason
it tastes like rabbit stuffed into the ring around a dove’s eye
on gigantic trays with dragons painted cardinal red
we’re served fear in aspic
and the guests lean back in their chairs
with shivers of pleasure and panic
there arrive new kinds of speech, adoration, lamentation
all in translation,
in thinly sliced words time whines milky in the glasses
on the table cloth vanity drips from the candle holders
in orange syllables
there is an art in knowing how to combine the letters
so as to manage your ego, your weight, your rage
how to nourish your pride with purple accents
or to choose what to taste first
either humility on little plates
or creamed patience with the sharp tang of Roquefort
we gulp, we quaff, we guzzle down words
the feast drains our minds, stuffs our souls
in a far corner history drapes a full-dress cape
over her bare shoulders
false memories
a well-hidden thought is enough
for fear to grip you to the bone
the sleepwalker stalking through others’ dreams
with white illusions and false memories—
tragedy deceived by loose reins
the imagination bought off with alternative destinies
alone with our own words
rolling like beads of ink
on glossy paper that absorbs nothing
no shelter at home they stand by the fence in line
or curl up in dusty corners
other lives with doors wide open face the wall
lost in translation
this never-ending to-and-from—
diamonds in fine gravel
with the pretense of a moment’s glitter—
perfect imitations
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Carmen Firan, born in Romania, is a poet and a journalist. She has published 28 books in USA and Europe. Her recent books are Interviews and Encounters (Poetry with Nina Cassian, Sheep Meadow Press), Inferno (SD Press), Rock and Dew (Sheep Meadow Press), Words and Flesh (Talisman Publishers), The Second Life (Columbia University Press). Her writings appear in translation in many literary magazines and in various anthologies in France, Israel, Sweden, Germany, Ireland, Poland, Canada, etc. She is the co-editor of Born in Utopia. An Anthology of Romanian Contemporary Poetry, Talisman Publishers; Naming the Nameless. An Anthology of American Contemporary Poetry, and Stranger at Home. Poetry with an Accent – An anthology of American Contemporary Poetry, Numina. She is a member of PEN American Center and the Poetry Society of America. She lives in New York City. www.carmenfiran.com