Golgona Anghel

I CAME BECAUSE THEY PAID ME,
and I wanted to buy the future in installments.

I came because they told me about picking cherries
or weapons of mass destruction.
But I only found cuckoos and fair gossip,
plastic machine guns, Easter bunnies and tin wristbands.

Onboard, someone spoke of justice
(no, it was not Marx).
Onboard, they also spoke of freedom.
The more we died,
the more freedom we had to kill.

I killed you because you were close,
because the others stayed on the supermarket corner
talking, debating the subject.

With these hands I raised the dust
with which I now cover our bodies.

With these legs I went up ten floors
so that I could look to you eyes on eyes.

Does someone still dare to speak of posterity?
I only think about returning home;
and how beautiful the hope is on me
while I do the live presentation
of my glory's autopsy.


///

VIM PORQUE ME PAGAVAM,
e eu queria comprar o futuro a prestações.

Vim porque me falaram de apanhar cerejas
ou de armas de destruição em massa.
Mas só encontrei cucos e mexericos de feira,
metralhadoras de plástico, coelhinhos da Páscoa e pulseiras de lata.

A bordo, alguém falou de justiça
(não, não era o Marx)
A bordo, falavam também de liberdade.
Quantos mais morríamos,
mais liberdade tínhamos para matar.

Matava porque estavas perto,
porque os outros ficaram na esquina do supermercado
a falar, a debater o assunto.

Com estas mãos levantei a poeira
com que agora cubro os nossos corpos.

Com estas pernas subi dez andares
para assim te poder olhar de frente.

Alguém se atreve ainda a falar de posteridade?
Eu só penso em como regressar a casa;
e que bonito me fica a esperança
enquanto apresento em directo
a autópsia da minha glória.

by Golgona ANGHEL (b.1979), Romanian poet (she writes in Portuguese and Spanish), in "VIM PORQUE ME PAGAVAM", Editora Mariposa Azual, 2011

(English translated by Armando TABORDA, 2019)

(photograph taken from Internet - published under the fair use doctrine for noncommercial educational purposes)

(post 1st edition, 2019; 2nd edition, 2021)