Wheel With a Single Spoke by Nichita Stanescu

leaf part
    just because
    the sun seemed
    an evil of light.

Knot 23
    I stole my childhood body,
    I swaddled it
    and put it in a basket of rushes, –
    and threw it in the river
    so it would go and die in the delta.
    The unfortunate, tearful, tragic fisherman, full of pity,
    brought me the body in his arms
    just now.

Sign 18
    I climbed in through my own ankle,
    through the tunnel up, through the knee,
    heart, up to the top, under the eyebrow,
    and I ran through the eye
    buck naked, – without noticing,
    but he bent his hand toward me,
    he shooed me through the enormous pupil,
    through the crown of the blue iris,
    he knocked me almost senseless with his heart,
    whacked me with his kneecap,
    and shook me into his ankle.
    â€“ Now let’s run, because it’s time, he said,
    let’s run fast, he said,
    we have to tell someone something, hurry, he said.
    And he started to run.

Sign 19
    The angel died
    but I could not carry him,
    he turned to water and slipped through my fingers,
    he wet my knee
    and washed the feet
    I use to run,
    it was his way of leaving
    and leaving me alone
    in an endless sprint.

Knot 31
    What the fish feels cleaned,
    what the deer feels shot,
    what the butchered ox feels butchered,
    what the stone feels shattered,
    what the fly feels swatted,
    what the snake feels split,
    what the grass feels withered,
    what the flower feels picked,
    what the chick feels boiled,
    what the egg feels burnt,
    what the oak feels felled,
    what the traitor feels decapitated,
    is the light when seen.

Knot 33. In the Quiet of Evening
    I thought of a way so sweet
    for words to meet
    that below, blooms bloomed
    and above
    grass greened.
    I thought of a way so sweet
    for words to crash
    that perhaps grass would bloom
    and blooms would grass.

TRANSLATOR’S AFTERWORD
    When I left Liceul Ioan Cuza, the high school in Bucharest where I taught for two years, a fellow teacher gave me a collection from the Romanian Modernist Lucian Blaga, a poet my colleagues had introduced to me. While I was moved by the gift, I was puzzled by the dedication: “Eu insumi / şi după aceea” – “myself, / and after that” – two lines from Nichita Stănescu’s poem “Enkidu.” The literal statement was clear, as was the token of friendship, but I could tell I was missing a sense of the gesture. Not only did I not know the particular poem, depicting the bond between Gilgamesh and Enkidu, I also did not recognize the aesthetics that endowed lines as abstract as these with the longing for friendship. Only now, almost two decades later, have I begun to understand Stănescu’s poetry, his importance in Romanian literary history, and the promise he holds for readers of poetry in English. Behind the lines from “Enkidu” “my slower body / dragged along by thought, like goats at evening, / by a rope. / Time, alone everywhere, myself, / and after that,” we can glimpse a complex history that made his work beloved in Romania, the words one might reach for to express farewell to someone leaving the country.
    He was not an obscure choice, by any means. Nichita Stănescu was the defining poet of Communist-era Romania. From his first collection, The Sense of Love (1960), to Knots and Signs (1982), the last to appear in his lifetime, he wrote innovative, conceptual, and challenging poetry charged with energy. In an era of intense cultural politics, his aesthetics made him a leader of his generation, and his poetry was widely read. Stănescu’s work was reviewed everywhere, required in high-school curricula, and recited on stage and television by the leading actors of his day. At its peak, his fame transcended even humanity. Nichita Danilov recalls Stănescu being feted with an introduction suited for a demigod: “Remember, my friends. Take a good look at this man. He is a genius. Rejoice that you were able to meet him! That you lived at the same time as he did!” This