Goldsmith Market by Liliana UrsuTranslated by Sean Cotter
Zephyr Press (2003)
Nothing pleases The Olives of Oblivion more than finding an individual collection from a foreign-language author translated in its entirety. As far too often is the case, works from authors writing in different languages show up in America only as selected or so-called essential editions. Not so with Sean Cotter's translation of Romanian poet Liliana Ursu. In this case, Zephyr Press has done the good work of giving Ursu's readers the opportunity to experience her vision in the way it was intended.
Goldsmith Market is a series of varied and haunting poems. Ursu never settles for one tone, style, or theme. Rather, she surprises at every turn by offering an ever-changing, and oftentimes sobering, vision of postwar Sibiu, the Romanian city (and author's birthplace) at the heart of this collection. Here are but three of the many fine poems from this book:
A DAY IN WINTER
I lean over the well to drink.
The ribbon of water barely breathes
but below the rusted pipe, a grass nest is so young
and fragile under a thick crust of ice.
The whistle of a train passing through a distant valley
slides over my cold, boiling mouth. Like this maybe
Death, over every moment of life.
A day in winter, a day in summer: same soul
same words, same list of things;
only wild ducks fluttering over the frozen green river
keeps them apart.
SKETCH
Theme:
Outskirts, a chair factory, the lake
Alcohol, women under a streetlight
the orphanage sign, an Autumn night.
Think!
Tomorrow. Tomorrow death will search you out.
The gods' blood is thick with wrath
and hay drives this city-stuffed skull crazy.
You should let your melancholy be torn from you
the way dogs tear meat from a holy animal.
Red moonlight fills the world.
Are you listening?
Every three hundred years
a meteor kills a man.
IN PERUGIA, ANOTHER ARTIST HAS COMMITTED SUICIDE
In Piazza San Marco
no duel, no blind man
no translucent cube.
Your hands petting some stone dogs.
Your hands prolong the arctic nights.
You feed pigeons from the barrel of a gun.
Pharaohs in shadows, nurse
their days under a jade canopy.
No meadow between us,
not even a fjord.
Horses harnessed to the pyramids
pull them toward your feet
over a green velvet carpet.
See
the world rests on the back of a turtle
who has no muscles or bone, but wisdom
and resignation.
In Perugia, another artist has committed suicide.
I walk ruby death on a leash.
It has rained for two weeks straight
Spearmint hangs from the beam to dry, pristine...
Goldsmith Market is from Zephyr Press's ever-growing catalog of essential poets from around the globe, which includes Ingeborg Bachmann, Mikhail Aizenberg, and Anna Ackhmatova.
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