Florea Ţuţuianu

The Book of Life

I need my sleep
Only in sleep does the poetry I have to write
give itself to me

Between the two of us there’s a book
(we make our way through it while we live)
Its pages rustle like my skin
as your lips learn to read it

It’s alive, I tell you:
(the words live in a secret language)
If you rest your ear against it
soul water and blood begin to speak

It’s a book lived in full exactly as written:
in a life read all in one breath

translated from Romanian by
Adam J. Sorkin and Irma Giannetti

Return to Volume 4.2

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