“Field Notes”

by Ioan Flora

Sometime in the '40s (one could check this),
they made several holes in the ice on the Danube ,
and three thousand people
drowned,
like stones dropped in the water.

In the forests of Catin,
before dawn, some tens of thousands drank
a libation of milk mixed with plaster of paris, and they one and all
metamorphosed,
some into alder trees, others into fungi.

Right this moment, in the middle of the asphalt highway,
a snake is depositing her eggs, big as a ram's balls, through her mouth,
and she strives to dig a hole in the asphalt with her tail.
On the banks of the Danube, candles burn, thrust
into the snow under the same blue sky.

translated from the Romanian by Adam J. Sorkin and Elena Borta