EUGEN JEBELEANU (1911-1991), one of Romania's most important and challenging 20th century poets, is virtually unknown in the West. He published more than 12 collections of poems, received numerous prestigious European literary awards (including the Italian Taormina Prize, and the Austrian Herder Prize), and in the 1970s was nominated by the Romanian Academy for the Nobel Prize. These translations from his final collection, Secret Weapon (published in Romania in 1980), are the first widespread appearance of his work outside of Romania. Secret Weapon will be published by Verse Press in April 2001. RECONCILIATION Those gone surround us. Such bracelets of shining stones surrounding a great treasure! But what if the treasure isn't us, but ones who live without any desire? People, chickens and foxes, worms, and mysteries, gold and iron, concrete and lead and silver, and so many other metals, iron and chains and many many cosmic riches . . . Silent today, all immobile. Do you want a palace? If you want them, you can have them all. But beautiful skull, I can feel you smiling . . . NIGHT At night, lying in bed on the narrow sheet, the sheet riddled with senile wrinkles, when my bones, my independent bones, are hurting me, when I listen to the breathtaking songs of clang clang, when I dream what cannot be, when I memorize vaguely what was, when I can no longer build a coop for some problematic stars, when what the Big Ones are preparing for us over the ocean or in other places no longer interests me, when I can neither sleep nor stay awake, then close to me with large disgusting steps with a body like a bored harpie comes Lele, great Lele, Lele of Boredom, Lele who without malice gives me a slap on my ashen lips, smothers my head in the rotten cabbage of the pillow, and whistles bored through teeth that reach up to her ears, "You have died enough. Now go on ..." And I wake up tomorrow in the lulling arms of life . . . INVISIBLE Don't pay too much attention when you follow me The more attention you pay the less you'll see of me I am not where you think I am I'm between spaces I sing between sounds I hide between bars and not behind them Stalked by a tiger I'm safe not in a cage but in the spaces between Sometimes the moon sneaks through very pale invisible WHAT CAN BE DONE I appeared in this world without volition. I will remain as much as I can, or am permitted, since I need so many visas, for air and for freedom. But in the end I will become something that cannot be seen. Something singing in water and smiling in stones. CLARA for Joska M. Oh, I see her hanging. But she didn't hang herself. That would have been better, for she would have remained just as beautiful as she was: noble apple under a tree cheeks so clean so transparent round flame of life. Wherever she lowered her eyes grass grew, potatoes communicated amongst themselves with complicit, happy looks, wheat raised its eyebrows even during a drought. But she didn't hang herself. Not from a tree branch, nor from the question mark of a hook. She didn't hang herself. She flew, she threw herself from the pupil of a balcony towards the earth she made fertile. She didn't want to remain in the air, nor on the earth that she loved. She wanted not to be anything any longer. Neither apple, nor round flame, nor nothing. Nothing. And she was guilty of nothing. WERE YOU TO BEAT ME I wouldn't say a word. I would laugh a laugh that would stun you. You would become a marble fountain. And from the tears dripping onto those lips so round I would drink you. COSTANZA Constanza, city I know. Constanza of contraband stars and forgotten musk, Constanza kissed by salty wind. Where I walk, where I once walked. Where there are crosses, slabs of moon, and a defunct finger of a mosque. An ah for you happy young sleepwalkers, an oh and an ouch to the one who only remembers, and another ouch for me Eternal Sea, lioness of waves, pass a tolerant hand over my dried old eyes. You are parting forever from me. You are coming back always for those not yet found. DIDO Immobile you are more beautiful than in life. Sublime. Death found you a perfect rhyme. If you could see yourself you would not want ever to have lived. DIALECTICS I learned from the water how not to flow I learned from the plow how not to plow and from life I learned how to disappear FROM WHERE YOU DON'T EXPECT IT From where you don't expect it, jumps the rabbit, hop! A sea rabbit, then a salt one, then one of pepper. The sea gave me about forty thousand white foam rabbits somersaulting filling the horizon with water lilies and starring my sky. One of them curled up into my arms. From time to time he smiles ironically. Sometimes he comes out. He is a gentle rabbit of fiery snow and he never wears epaulets. FLOWERS AT THE STATUE OF EMINESCU Why you would find this useful, nobody knows. Meaning it isn't useful at all. The poetry of poverty is getting stronger everywhere. The only strong ones are those who can mount. The horses get weaker and weaker, and the horsemen more and more bestial. And the ribs of the horses are solar jewels in the prison of dead visions. And we deserve all these things because we have earned them. Now you are bronze, and you don't care about anything. Or, maybe, I don't know ... Because, last night it seemed to me that cautiously rotating your infinite oceanic eyes you pulled one carnation from the wreath caressing your back and swallowed it secretly. MATTHEW ZAPRUDER has recently published poems in Harvard Review, Fence and the Verse Younger American Poets issue. He has work upcoming in Volt. Poems from Eugen Jebeleanu's Secret Weapon have appeared in Verse, Salt Hill, Fence, International Poetry Review and Exquisite Corpse. RADU IOANID, who did the literal translations, is a historian who lives in Washington D.C. He is the author of books about Romanian fascism and the Holocaust in Romania, and wrote the introduction to the recently-published Diaries of Mihail Sebastian.