Lucian Mănăilescu: "a game of quanta and atoms"

Everything Transforms

It's all a game of quanta and atoms –

we know but can never really explain,

because the waters, flowing, change to clouds,

and mountains, waiting, weather to a plain.

Butterflies perish in heaps of colors,

the stars decay to a dust of starlight,

people burst into flames of snowfall,

blanketing an unreal world in white.

But the very dream that fashions empires,

the very thought that struck the tongue dumb,

how we felt and what we were – no one knows,

nor can imagine what change will come.

Totul se transformă

E-un joc de molecule şi atomi

pe care-l ştim, dar nu-l putem pricepe,

căci apele, curgând, se schimbă-n nori

iar munţii, aşteptând, se schimbă-n stepe.

Pier fluturii-n noianul de culori,

stele decad în pulberea astrală,

oamenii ard în flăcări de ninsori

înzăpezind o lume ireală.

Şi numai visul, plăsmuind imperii,

şi numai gândul, ce-a murit pe limbă,

şi numai c-am simţit şi că am fost

nu ştim, nu bănuim, în ce se schimbă.

Albert Dreux: "the gyring birds of desire"

Refinement

When, the senses quelled and eyes half-closed,
We feel, beloved, a gentle, animal
Calm descend, a snow of ash, invincible
On the bright, impassioned fire that blazed,

We are content. Without regret or trepidation
The heart drowses peacefully; thoughtless,
We dream blurred dreams of expended excess
And drift toward a vague oblivion.

– But when we have resisted such frenzies
And have held back from quaffing to its lees
The entire, enervating cup of pleasure,

What joy to have still the spur of longing
And to suffer, forever, like moths thronging
Our darkness, all the gyring birds of desire.

Raffinement

Quand, les sens apaisés et les yeux demi-clos,
Nous sentons, ô très chère, invincible descendre
Le beau calme animal neigeant comme une cendre
Sur le feu clair, ardent, qui flamboyait tantôt,

On est heureux! Le cœur s’endort, tout doucement,
Sans regret, sans frisson; et l’âme sans pensée,
On songe vaguement aux forces dépensées,
Et l’on flotte en un vague anéantissement.

Mais, lorsque nous avons refusé la folie
Et que nous n’avons pas voulu jusqu’à la lie
Boire la coupe entière et fade du plaisir,

Quel bonheur de garder l’aiguillon dans nos veines
Et de sentir toujours, comme un vol de phalène,
Planer autour de nous les oiseaux du désir.