Ileana Negrea, translated by Roxana Cazan
What You Have Down There
is more than itself,
a planet,
an unruly and
undisclosed world,
it is a just society,
an equal society,
it is an outdoor cathedral,
a cookie cutter for life,
a bottom of the ocean
populated by an extra-
terrestrial plankton,
a massive, mighty
neodymium magnet.
What you have down there,
honeyed water,
divinity’s drink of choice,
a central, unrounded vowel
like an unreachable path,
a silk road
binding the sacred
to the fleeting,
bone to body.
What you have down there,
a butterfly,
wide wings
unflinching,
a hankering,
a taste for something,
and a whim,
titillating and triggering,
disturbing the coherence
of light.
What you have down there,
Glagolitic alphabet,
I study it,
I use it to write my name,
I dig in it tenderly
with the tips of my fingers,
my tongue,
in this kinetic sand
where I write
my name
to be last.