Die quietly say—I’ve had enough of saying.
Be quiet write with fingers of sand—I become my own child.
He hears a mystic verse that tore down a walled city hears
a chorus of electric laughter rising.
Say—die quietly—I’m a poet and poets
don’t speak the truth.
Place the shroud over your face the black hymn called out at the slave market
o, my generation, I don’t know you!
You hear the way the soul cries strung up in dwarf stars hear how the little heart sings
covering the pub in leaden ink quiet
you die quietly
and tomorrow the sun will rise.

Nicolae Coande is a poet, publicist, and essayist who hold degrees in Philosophy and Sociology from the University of Craiova. In Craiova, he serves in the Writers’s Union of Romania and as Literary Secretary of the “Marin Sorescu” National Theatre. He’s published five volumes of poetry, and his poems, essays, and articles have been published in numerous Romanian journals and anthologies.

Martin Woodside is a poet and translator who earned an MFA at San Diego State University. His chapbook of poems, Stationary Landscapes, came out in 2009 (Pudding House Press). He spent 2009-10 on a Fulbright in Romania, and his translations of Romanian poetry are forthcoming in a featured section from Poetry International and in an anthology, Of Gentle Wolves, from Calypso Editions.

Homepage photograph via Flickr by Jenny Huang