Poems by Sorin-Mihai Grad

Surrogate of a story

translated by Stella Davis & Mădălina Moţ [MTTLC student]

we are useless and we think about death
this is everything we know and we don’t say it one another
your story is more insipid than you
take me out of it
every word which I would tell you would beg me to
then an observation about time periods and weather
or time and ages
even cycles and times
the reversal of the apocalypse is only an illusion
not mine
a transparent slice of nothing
a head leaning on a table
and?
she’s gorgeous*, but we are digressing from the subject again
we don’t see each other, we don’t talk to one another, it is raining, yes, it’s raining
it could be a natural conclusion
only fatigue is punished on Sundays

—
* = the text appears in English also in the Romanian original version

Surrogate of cohabitation

translated by Stella Davis & Mădălina Moţ [MTTLC student]

they were living at the third floor, last one on the right
a room for four, filled up with five
adding up another two or three
who were different every now and again
plus those who ended up in their beds, as they were students, weren’t they?
dinamo, u, rapid, cfr, steaua
this is what they were interested in besides what I have already told you
and also to have a boxful of liquid bread under the bed
they went at the faculty once in a while
but not more often than on the football field
from behind it
the first time I came to be at their place
they told me not to open the fridge
before opening the window
and to be careful not to touch their wire
which replaced the aerial and was better than any brad pitt
or pamela anderson?
we shall think about it, the boobed-angel is watching over our youth
look how she smiles at us happy that we let her stay on our wall
properly dressed, of course
beside metallica, britney, bayern, pistol stark naked
senna, miss august ans shaq
one can barely notice that this place hasn’t been whitewashed ever since my father
has had a hair cut at the dean’s office
it hasn’t even been swept since one of their mothers
passed by to be horripilated
by the place where the pride of the family
is sleeping.

Cemetery Surrogate

translated by Nigel Walker & Alexandra Sârbu [MTTLC student]

abandoned words flow on the dead sheet
in an illiterate direction
their syllables disappear among the ruins of the sentences
which aborted them
the letters can no longer be recognized
they randomly take each other by their hands
in an unpronounceable way
or run from each other
and disappear

a few words left on the sheet
and some which became others
try
to gather themselves in a sentence
so as to save themselves from falling
and oblivion
leaning upon the melted relics
of others
hoping
there will be someone
to decipher their agony
and understand their story

Sleep surrogate

translated by Nigel Walker & Alexandra Sârbu [MTTLC student]

until now I have escaped life sleeping
I hid behind sleep
I haven’t allowed myself to dream either
so I won’t disturb myself
with any battle temptation, pleasure nor word
of what I was to myself

wars will have passed by my bed
storms, galleries, loudspeakers, whispers, orgasms, tractors
they didn’t make me smarter not awaker
we ignored each other no matter what
each remaining what they were
had anyone cared for me all this time
I wouldn’t know either

one stripped day I woke up by chance
in seven colours, maybe nine, I didn’t try
to count, it looked like something seen on a rim of the sky
sometime I wonder what they are called
maybe I will remember but I’m a bit tired
and I fall asleep head on the sill

#
the original versions of these poems, in Romanian, can be read in the author’s recent book SUROGAT