„Baciu, bacio” by Keijiro Suga

În partea a patra a dosarului tematic „Ștefan Baciu”, vă propunem un poem dedicat lui Ștefan Baciu, semnat de poetul și traducătorul japonez Keijiro Suga, un fost student al lui Baciu la Universitatea din Hawaii. Poemul a apărut în revista „MELE Arhipelago. Scrisoare arhipelagică de poezie”, număr aniversar, din decembrie 2018, dedicat centenarului nașterii lui Ștefan Baciu, număr îngrijit de Yoshiro Sakamoto, căruia îi mulțumim pentru acordul de a-l republica pe Literomania. (Literomania)

Keijiro Suga

Baciu, bacio

Aurora in the tropics is remembering the east.
Wear your brown leather shoes, no socks,
Why not take a morning stroll on the most famous beach of your life?
White doves sing sad cucurucucu.
The bloody coliseum of ideologies collapses.
No worries, unless you go aboard the ship of souvenirs,
No dangerous song of the Sirens come your way.
„Stay here, live here Go nowhere else, forget it all.”
Shut up, you noisy Sirens!
I never told anybody
The reason why I left my patria.
I could have lived as a road sweeper.
I could have been a trader of cigars.
But with an iceberg burning in my heart,
My peregrination headed for the oceans.
Born an old man, I know no despair.
„I need no support, nor compassion, nor sympathy,
Because I am the strongest,
Because I’ve never had hope in my life.
I keep on living.”
Now I know what Professor Cioran meant.
To have no hope and to know no despair
Are two sides of the same coin, two faces of Janus.
And in a great port city named after Janus,
A city without the river,
I have lived for some time.
Maybe my true matria was Romance languages.
(How ironical it is!
In my younger days I have worked
as a private tutor for a boy named Estaline).
At the bottom of my heart sometimes rings
A peculiar melody composed of various lines,
Then comes afloat the rhythm of samba
To efface it all.
Dark colored women efface me by their dancing,
Their feet keep nicely stepping the waves.
The world history baffles me.
I never liked the Atlantic, you know, be it but an idea.
After spending my life in the resounding sounds of the sea
That boom in my ears,
It was the Pacific that finally saved me.
Riding the Polynesian mele
The tropical aurora fills the morning sky.
But I, with my dark green glasses,
Can’t really tell the color of its light.
Still, I like the pain given by the sand grains in my shoes.
To wash away the sands that fill up my shoes,
I will walk at the bottom of the waves
With my leather shoes on, no socks.
I often wake up with a dream of my own burial.
As I lie dying, my faithful ears
Hear the cheerful laughter coming from myself.