[MY UTOPIA WAS YOUR HEART]
My utopia was your heart.
Your utopia, a wit more modest, was paradise.
You crafted it furtively, with a heavy heart (your heart – my utopia),
and when it was finished, you threw us into it, as you might chuck into a lake
a plastic bag, tightly knotted at the mouth, filled with
newborn puppies.
And you plugged your ears with your luminous palms, that you
might not hear us whimpering.
And you assigned your theologians to write, with their luminous palms,
that no paradise exists for cats and dogs.
What need do I have for a paradise without cats and dogs?
The devil needs himself. It would be like a paradise without children.
Whether you remove your palms from your ears, or you allow us to bring
our cats and dogs into your paradise of ruined hearts,
I know what you’ll say: that I, too, have thrown tightly-knotted bags into my heart
filled with kittens and puppies who continue drowning.
That I, too, laid my luminous palms over the ears of my heart
to keep from hearing their terror-crazed whines.
That I, too, use my pen like the trembling theologians
who feared their own tongues of fire, for no paradise exists
in my heart for the dogs among us.
And you are perfectly right. I resemble you. I was
your utopia.
And this thought alone should make you gaze
up, terror-crazed – see the plastic
bag, knotted tightly at the mouth.
(Radu Vancu,
translated from Romanian by Alina Stefanescu)
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THIS 😭 Robin, do you know what book this is from?