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Putere absoluta (Absolute Power), Marineasa Publishers, Timisoara, 1999, ISBN 973-9485-10-3, (Romanien), 108 pag.

Price $10,00US (USA), 7,00 $US (Europe) (Exempare semnate în original de catre autor) Shop

TIMISOARA, TIMISOARA

hundred and fifty – Deutsche Marks, of course – not a single Pfennig more

for it’s old and broken and I can’t tell how much the repair will cost (to say nothing of the ride to Budapest) I hope

you realize I’m taking it only because I see you’re hard up and I like taking risks come

let’s strike the bargain – this incident involving a photo

journalist buying a high-grade camera in mint

condition from a second-hand street vendor for something less than three point five per cent of

its value I did witness through the clumsily patched-up hole in a Romanian flag

after ’89 – it is sad that of all places it occurred in Romania

and at Timisoara to boot for it might have occurred any place else

it so happened that Timisoara God bless her was also the place

of some other exchanges in which some Roma had been cheated and several Romanians had been led only God knows where to find their peace while Hungarians and Serbs and Croats and Czechs and Germans and Jews all of them

had been aware of the risk they ran when taking money out of their pockets their wallets or out of their homeland / to say nothing of the "legal" possession of hard currency

which the vigilant eye of the border-guard would spot

in the spare wheel of the ramshackle bus

in the bus driver’s frightened eyes in the tourist guide’s distracted look

as he was dutifully filling out his report to the customs chief inspector

anyway it would be unjust and below our position and power

to regard all these as real, true, and incontrovertible

at a time when everything is ripe for a change / more than mere post stamps money clothes customs words affiliations

whether political administrative geographical sexual religious moral and above all

Timisoara, December 1995

Translated from the Rumanian by Heathrow O’Hare

T o W h o m e v e r M i g h t A s k

the singers did not sing

the teachers did not preach

the students did not do their homework

the writers did not write

the artists did not paint

the military did not militate

the activists did not take action

the zealots did not try hard enough

the slothful did not idle their time away

the terrorists did not spread terror

the others (how

should one call them?)

not finding something outstanding to do

hit themselves hard with a truncheon across their skulls

or maybe they handcuffed themselves and got into

the police vans whoever

could not find room in there caught a bullet

in the leg or in the chest or in the head it did not matter where

just for the sake

of providing sensational stuff

to whomever

may ask

Cannes, June 1998

Translated from the Romanian by HEATHROW O'HARE

Th y had lots of fun down there

the soldier in his military outfit did have a great time

gunned down as he had been by the plain-clothes agent who himself

was having a great time gunned down by the sergeant

in a military uniform who in his turn had been gunned

down by his plain-clothes counterpart whom a uniform

officer (had he not?) and since the plain-clothes officer had to get rid

(by any means?) of his bullet somewhere it so happened

that he lodged it right between

the other fellow’s eyes

they did indeed have lots of fun down there in the streets

in the public gardens in moldy cellars in hospitals at day care centers

in cemeteries underground in the air everywhere

they did indeed have a very good time

and nobody seemed to be upset either

as if that had long been (written?)

or meant to be so

Cannes, June 1998

Translated from the Romanian by HEATHROW O'HARE

MOVE ON PLEASE

the preacher spoke in a mannered fashion

the listener spoke in a mannered fashion

the gentleman with no clear assignment in the underestimated economy of the evening

spoke in a mannered fashion (he could be

that very one ready to jump out of a blue jeans jacket

into a regular uniform though without a hand gun and other military insignia or

that one who having just gotten rid of his uniform with its diagonal belt map-holder and

pistol was shivering with cold in a loose outmoded overcoat) what the heck has

happened to them all that they started speaking in such a mannered fashion

while we didn’t find anything better to do but

to braid in and out the already tangled hairs

of the pedestrian traffic

Ludwigsburg, December 1997

Translated from the Rumanian by Heathrow O’Hare

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T o W h o m e v e r M i g h t A s k

Th y had lots of fun down there

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