Psychopomp

by Ştefan Bolea
translation from Romanian by Raisa Lambru [MTTLC student]

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The war has started. I am undercover. Only those who can see the other side may realize that I’m wearing the enemy’s uniform. The uniform of the non-human, of the monster. (In a technological manner, Houellebecq describes what Cioran and Lautréamont have drafted. Just that you’re at the morgue and you’ve got no idea about it.) I have to disguise myself? I don’t think they’d notice me, they don’t have too many seers. They take revenge on those with the hidden gift of foreseeing: they lock them up or they send them to the desert, as slaves. (The elevator doors won’t open anymore. Comfort yourself. Have you already been on the roof of the world?) (Effort? Can’t you write with blood when you’ve got fuel flowing through your veins?) (Who are you? The bomb hiding at the base of post-modernism? A bomb like a tremor that awaits its timing ? Intrinsic bomb.) (Corso again? Benn again?)

If I weren’t wearing the mask, they’d catch me and put me to death. As I’m guessing, I’m their death. They’re scared of me. They hide their fear under contempt. Under the whip lashes. Under the punishment of existence, to quote Anaximander. “Never free, never me”. I’m a new race. I’m the butterfly from the chaos theory, the one bringing the apocalypse. I’m the emblem of nihilism. The Omega letter in flames. I am two lines above the void and Nemesis rises above me. If Nothing is the only thing capable of dissolving God, then I am the antidote for the poison represented by man. VITRIOL.

I’m strolling around the border after having hung at the centre. There’s a whiff of rottenness coming from its foundation. I wonder when you’ve died. 1792? 1600? 999? You’re all optimists. I consider Christianity to be a symptom of being willing to die – that was when the stink entered your hefty bodies. It grew like a worm which pours out between Eve’s teeth. You’re all degraded and I am the cure: the Anti-man. My predecessors: Anti-creator, Anti-pope, Anti-divinity, etc.

You watch me but you can’t see me. You don’t make use of your two eyes, just like Oedip. You pass by me but you can’t guess who I am. Why am I being polite? Why am I shaving? (Why won’t I let my hair grow? Why am I imitating the monkey at the tip of your tongue?) Because of the calculation. You’d lynch me if you knew who I was. King Kong is preparing the rocket launcher. King Kong’s got its hand on the fuse. King Kong has a bag full of grenades, a cauldron of mines. King Kong has a thousand tanks.

I come to abolish death from life.

(your) life = death

(my) death = resurrection

(your) death = life. Mine.

The bulletproof vest doesn’t protect you from the thorn in your heart.

Ştefan Bolea

Translation from Romanian by Raisa Lambru, MTTLC student