August in Boston

The light
is so soft
that it clings
to your skin
like static
butterflies

Romanian Story

It was still communist Romania then.
We shared our small Bucharest apartment
with cousins, aunts and complete unknowns.
Life as usual.

And I was seven years old.

One Sunday morning, my father opened a World Atlas and showed me the places he has traveled to. Here was Spain and the Guns of Gibraltar, Morocco and Libya, Patagonia with her wild winds, Egypt where Napoleon found the Rosetta Stone and the key to the language of the pyramids, Cyprus given as a wedding present to Cleopatra, and Homer’s world from Turkey to Ulysses’ Ithaca…..

I was mesmerized.
I touched the geography contours on the map,
dreaming of far lands and hidden seas.
And, every day, I asked for more stories
the “Meridians of the Heart”
as he called them.

I was so proud of my father’s traveling adventures,
that I could not stop telling all my friends about them.
One day, my mother who happened to overhear our conversation,
turned around and said in a flat,casual tone:

“ You father never left the country.
The Communists did not trust him with a passport.”

A Mouse , Two Turtles and a Handful of Warms

This is the "research team"
sent today into space
by the Iranian scientists.

How beautiful

It feels like reading Aesop's Fables

Telephone Call

"When are you coming home"
he asks.

No idea.
"Home" is wherever I am
she thinks.

Still too shy to answer.

Tiger Woods

I understand Mr. Woods has signed up for sex therapy treatment
a rather un productive and "wishful thinking" initiative
if you ask me

and I just wonder
how would he know
that the treatment is working.

PENTRU TATA , DE ZIUA LUI

"CUVINTELE POTRIVITE " A LUI ARGHEZI

Doamne, fă-i bordei în soare,
Într-un colţ de ţară veche,
Nu mai nalt decât o floare
Şi îngust cât o ureche.

Şi-n pridvor, un ochi de apă
Cu o luntre cât chibritul,
Ca-n crâmpeiul lui să–ncapă
Cerul tău şi nesfârşitul.

Dă-i un fluture blajin
Şi o broască de zmarald.
Şi-n pădurea de pelin
Fă să-i stea bordeiul cald.

Şi mai dă-i, Doamne, vopsele
Şi hârtie chinezească,
Pentru ca, mânjind cu ele,
Slava ta s-o zmângălească.

Şi când totul va fi gata
S-o muta la ea şi tata.

THE PATRIOT ACT

What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?

The barbarians are due here today.

Why isn't anything happening in the senate?
Why do the senators sit there without legislating?

Because the barbarians are coming today.
What laws can the senators make now?
Once the barbarians are here, they'll do the legislating.

Why did our emperor get up so early,
and why is he sitting at the city's main gate
on his throne, in state, wearing the crown?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and the emperor is waiting to receive their leader.
He has even prepared a scroll to give him,
replete with titles, with imposing names.

Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today
wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas?
Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts,
and rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds?
Why are they carrying elegant canes
beautifully worked in silver and gold?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and things like that dazzle the barbarians.

Why don't our distinguished orators come forward as usual
to make their speeches, say what they have to say?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and they're bored by rhetoric and public speaking.

Why this sudden restlessness, this confusion?
(How serious people's faces have become.)
Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,
everyone going home so lost in thought?

Because night has fallen and the barbarians have not come.
And some who have just returned from the border say
there are no barbarians any longer.

And now, what's going to happen to us without barbarians?
They were, those people, a kind of solution.

(Reading Cavafy on a Sunday morning in Boston)