Conatus
by Dan Sociu
Translated from Romanian by Monica Cure
I had come from the world of the dead in February
and I lived with dead, only in secret communication,
no embraces.
I had been in anguish, in anguish, in the light,
from where I had been sent
back into the world, I went into the old dream
where everything was different now though somehow the same
though other
or I was someone else
and I floated: I was a vegetarian and pure as an angel and saddened
by what had been returned to me and what had been taken.
I lived in a basement and was in love with a cat
with blue eyes, I told a friend that
and I saw in her eyes she was afraid:
the world in which I sensed the dead
and deeply loved cats terrified her.
My world was made of something else, three quarters death
and a quarter painful remains of the former world.
But my friend loved me like a sister, she wouldn’t let me love her
as I thought I still could but it would’ve been unnatural,
my body was somewhere else instead, among the dead.
And signs, signs everywhere. And meanings.
And the wind whistled in the subway so loudly that sometimes
it whistled beyond my hearing
and my brother passed by me twice
without recognizing me.
She found me in the basement in February
she bit me on the mattress near the stove with flames neither hot nor cold
until I was out of danger
until I could feel again.
How far away I was when she bit me,
her teeth seemed not to touch me
I felt her so close and warm
but like a fire that never stops going out.
I would’ve wanted to lift my arms to her like a baby
but couldn’t do anything
she kept biting me, the marks lasted a week,
that week she grabbed my hand
above the void and pulled me
I began to be unable to be without her
I began eating meat as ravenously as a beast
I began eating her flesh
she was all flesh and black magic
and she had left the world long before me
back when she was a child playing with ducks in her yard
and her paranoid-schizo grandma believed her guts had grown hard
and she was no longer alive
or whatever people who go crazy believe.
Our minds were connected only through the body
not through the mind too
we could hardly exchange a word or two
but together we’d see the light on a wall in spring,
feel the changes of the moon
and they disturbed us
we’d march down boulevards until late at night
and she was a mountain climber
and she made my legs muscular, she made me a man
she adored the man in me
she wanted to see him resurrected.
She scared me, I’d hide in the park,
among the dandelions silvered by the sun
and meditate so as not to think of her,
in lotus pose, gaze lost in the lake
and her threatening absence made circles on the water
I’d fight the stray dogs near the abbey
I’d tell her and she’d kiss my forehead absently
I’d pray, how desperately I’d pray in the other room
after we’d fight and I’d feel she wanted to leave.
Dan Sociu (b. 1978, Botoşani, Romania) has worked as a journalist, editor and copyeditor, as well as an English to Romanian translator. He has translated articles, plays, a volume of military strategy, over 20 novels, and the poetry of over 30 American and British poets. As a writer, he has published nine books of poetry, three novels, and additional prose and poetry in Romanian and international literary journals for which he has won numerous awards. He has been invited as an artist-in-residence in the U.S. and Germany.
Monica Cure is a Romanian-American poet, translator, and dialogue specialist. She won the 2023 Oxford-Weidenfeld prize for her translation of Liliana Corobca's novel The Censor's Notebook and her second translation by Corobca, Kinderland, recently appeared with Seven Stories press as well. Her poetry translations have been published in journals such as Kenyon Review, Asymptote, and Modern Poetry in Translation. Her own poems have appeared in Plume, RHINO, Boston Review, and elsewhere. She is currently based in Bucharest.