Beginning of the Century

by Dorina Brândusa Landén

In this part of the world there aren’t mismatches.
The king is returning from hunting.
The Prime Minister is dining.
I have catarrh.

My legs treading on snow
leave black traces on the diffusing white
like a war photograph
where all the dead are the young.

The air in your lungs burst
underwater bombs and my own body
became a deadly weapon
in line with the global trend
of self-destruction.

Happy mornings tumbled down
my life drops like a magic ball
in the world there is minus 38 degrees
and snow breaks the bowed branches.

From an immense geyser of ice
one can hear a vague vibration
as a distant hum of bumble bees
one can hear the too fast beating of the arteries
of those who live
under a law of its own collapse into nothingness.

Reindeers are crawling through the snow.
On the road the elk are hit by cars.
Selfishness
increases like a zygote of an enhanced race.

Candidates to government sneer
from a smattering wall poster
creditors are lurking around the corner
bread and honey aroma
thieves are stretching their cold tentacles
to steal your soul and money.

Shareholders investors
very rich people
overly benevolent
overwhelm us with an equivalent compassion
with our smothered desire.
Losers and bankrupts
failures
people with empty eyes like nests
driven by flocks of mist wander
on roads that lead nowhere.

I think of them as trees in the forests
where innocent wild beasts find death
woods percolated too much
by roots pulling up the sap
from bodies that have perished without a trace.

Suddenly angry blizzards fall
and wave the rolling seas
stormy Atlantic oceans
will cover us later
with the roar of the white foam kissing our faces
the uproar of the departures
towards the paradise where we’ll wake up
on resigned shores of countries that
we’ve forgotten how to serve
due to the mundane life - unbearable -
and to the maddening constraints.

Oh, many things are happening here
and beyond horizons the unfathomable vaults
indifference is strangling us
with braided straps of incantation
of those times when we were sharing
more shadow than light.

In the world we’ve created
there’s no more room
between us.
We're doomed
in the anxiety of the beginning of the century
in the circle where we’re locked
me and you
all and sundry
never to leave it again.

From: 
Dorina Brândusa Landén




Dorina Brândusa Landén's picture

ABOUT THE POET ~
Dorina Brândusa Landén was born in the Transylvanian city of Deva, Romania in 1958. Presently she is resident in Sweden. She has received the following awards: Romulus Guga’s Prose Competition, second prize, 1983, Lucian Blaga’s The National Poetry Festival Award, 1984, Ion D. Sîrbu Foundations Prize for Poetry in 2012 for the book Judecata apei (The Judgement of Water), poetry book in Romanian, DaniMar Publishing House, Romania. Poetry, prose and translations of Swedish poetry into Romanian have been published in a wide array of the Romanian literary magazines including: Romania literara (Romania literary), Luceafarul (The Star), Cronica (The Chronicle), Vatra (The Hearth), Orizont (Horizon), Tribuna (Tribune), Transilvania (Transylvania), SLAST, Vatra Veche (The Old Hearth) Euphorion, Ardealul literar (Transylvania literary) and Pro saeculum. In 1986 she had a reportage featured in in the collective volume: Journey from the springs (Calatorie spre izvoare), Eminescu Publishing House, Romania. Books: Vanzatorul de imagini (The Image Vendor), poetry book in Romanian, Calauza v.b. Publishing House, Romania (2010). Followed by La nord de sufletele voastre (North of your Souls), a poetry book in Romanian, Calauza v.b. Publishing House, Romania. (2011). Judecata apei (The Judgement of Water), poetry book in Romanian, DaniMar Publishing House, Romania. (2012). North of your Souls e-book, Ardiganbooks, UK (2012).


Last updated May 25, 2014