I was walking on the road. There was moonlight, kind autumn.
And it catches up with me and passes me by
A circle.
A big round thing made of iron.
A circle That was going all by itself on the road.
I looked behind:
did someone throw it? Maybe someone pushed it…
Nobody...
And, in the end, who should throw that thing
For it was as big and heavy – as the round rail foot
of a carriage.
I look ahead: the circle went on its way.
It was moving quickly, quickly and raising dust.
Just then Calotă’s son comes down the hill “Didja
see’t man?”
“Seen it." And he starts crossing himself.
What is with this, from which barrel did it spring,
Only Spânu has wine barrels so huge,
He might have gone away, and the barrel has toppled.
We were amazed like that, we wondered,
Calotă’s son was now white in the face, he got a bit
Scared by
The devilish thing.
And now Gligorie appears.
“Didja see’t man?”
“Didn’t. What was there to see?” “The circle.”
“What circle?
Ghiţă, Calotă’s son, bent down and showed him the trace in the dust.
It left a trace like a
carriage wheel.
“Eh, how many wheels pass on this road!”
The circle passed like this, aimlessly through the whole
village.
Some saw it, some didn’t.
Like, out of three people near where it passed,
Two saw it, one didn’t…
While we were waiting there Voooo – voo! Ooo!
Ooo!
Like a great tambourine thing...
And we see clouds of dust...
“Get out of the way, ‘cause it’s
coming… It’s going back...”
The circle was coming down the hill, perhaps a bit reddened now
From so much running, from so much inspection of the Bulzeşti village…
It was coming from the
village of Prădătorul, having crossed the marshes through Frăţilă
I grabbed Gligorie’s arm:
“D’ya see it, man?” “See what?”
“The circle.” “What circle?”
“This one that is now passing near us!
Don’t you hear how the earth
trembling, voooing,
raising dust...”
“There’s nothing passing.
I hear nothing. I see nothing.”
The circle came closer...
I took a closer look: could I say
That it’s like a wheel of a hansom cab? no, ’cause it didn’t have spokes...
And it shone too brightly...
Like the halo of a saint...
As if the head of some saint was rolling
in the dust
And its halo is carrying it like a rail
And it’s clothing it in radiance...
It moved whizzing...
And it was heating up from so much
rolling,
It was throwing sparks when it was touching
some stone,
Through Seculeşti, now it was here in Gura Racului,
and certainly
It wanted to go downhill to Nătărăi.
I moved closer and I felt its scent:
it smelled like
A perfect round. Like geometry... like cream
of geometry,
The essence of essences so to speak...
I fell on my knees.
So lightly and delicately it touched the ground
Full of mud, of the village.
Now it was stepping through Bulzeşti as if it was walking
On the moon, fuckin’ thing!
I was shivering with fright and was almost
teary,
Of so much honor, so much miracle.
“Eh, now, have ya seen it? I asked Gligorie,
one more time, who was picking the dirt
from under his fingernails
With a matchstick.
“What’s there to see?”
“The circle.”
“What circle?”
“Well then... go back to where you bloody came from, you blind bat! ‘
Cause I have nothing more to talk with those who see nothing,
apart from
what their wives show them!
“Let’s go," I pull Calotă’s son’s arm...
"Lucky you were here... else,
The circle would have told tales about us throughout the world,
What stupid blind people are in this village.”
The story with the fiery circle, coming to inspect,
Circulated a lot in our parts, by word of mouth, from village to village.
Not even the second war succeeded to extinguish it;
Only later, with the transformations, it faded
in the background.
And in the end, they prevailed, those who
didn’t see it.
(from the volume Testament - 400 de ani de poezie românească - 400 Years of Romanian Poetry - Daniel Ionita - editor and principal translator, assisted by Daniel Reynaud, Adriana Paul and Eva Foster - Minerva Publishing- 2019)
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