Fruit (Flesh won’t forget) by Cezar Ivanescu (trans Mihai Florea)

! Oh, no, flesh won’t forget its peculiar pattern:

humid eternal vertices push towards me,

as a bird over an army, I see their toss and turn and I startle.

 

Oh, no, flesh won’t forget its peculiar pattern!

 

! No wisdom king is touching it

only brutal hands, like cleavers. I

live at the edge of my kind

and in pain, I look at the

shameful parts of my body;

and like a candle-maker

my imploration I address to

the flickers of my yellowish head:

come, recall, a little at least,

how the pattern used to look

of that light vessel

we smilingly carried our fruit in.