{"id":3183,"date":"2020-02-13T06:40:10","date_gmt":"2020-02-13T06:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.iwabogdani.org\/?p=1675"},"modified":"2023-12-21T13:19:51","modified_gmt":"2023-12-21T13:19:51","slug":"elena-liliana-popescu-romania","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.iwabogdani.org\/sq\/elena-liliana-popescu-romania\/","title":{"rendered":"ELENA LILIANA POPESCU, Romania"},"content":{"rendered":"

ELENA LILIANA POPESCU<\/strong> (1948, Turnu M\u0103gurele, Romania). PhD in Mathematics, Professor at the University of Bucharest, Romania. She is poet, translator, essayist and editor, member of the Writers’ Union of Romania and\u00a0Romania and abroad
\nthe Romanian PEN Centre. She has
\npublished 60 books of poetry and translations from English, French and Spanish, both in\u00a0poems, translated into more than 20 languages, have been published in various anthologies
\nand in more than 100 literary magazines in Albania, Argentina, Australia, Bangladesh,
\nBolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, El Salvador, Estonia, Germany,\u00a0India, Italy, Mexico, Mongolia, Nicaragua,
\nPakistan,\u00a0Poland, Puerto Rico,
\nRomania, Serbia, Spain, Taiwan, Turkey, Uruguay, USA). She has participated in\u00a0various literary events abroad.\u00a0Moldova,<\/p>\n

YOU NEVER TOLD ME<\/p>\n

You told me
\nPoetry
\nis like
\nnothing ever before… A miracle
\nfound
\nin the silent moment lying hidden
\nin the common
\nfact.
\nYou told me Poetry
\nis Wonderment hiding
\nPOEMS
\nElena Liliana Popescu
\n(Argentina, Brazil, Italy, Mexico, Spain, USA, Pakistan, Taiwan). Her
\nHungary, Republic of<\/p>\n

despair
\nof not knowing
\nto unravel the Mystery.
\nBut you never told me Poetry
\ncalls you
\nWhere
\nyou can find
\nthe Question\u2013Answer.<\/p>\n

SONG OF LOVE
\nSeated at the table of Silence, In the unknown kingdom, Poets break for us
\nfresh bread,
\nsprinkled
\nwith heavenly dew..
\nThe dead go with the dead, they say \u2013 the living with the living!
\nBut do we really know
\nwho is dead,
\nand who is living?
\nAnother Poet, in the beyond… One less Poet, here.
\nDeparting
\nfor the silent kingdom, the Poet leaves behind a song of Love unknown…<\/p>\n

TELL ME
\nYou never believed you could win by giving up weapons,<\/p>\n

and would find your freedom only by fighting your own image.
\nYou will no longer look at yourself in mirrors that show you
\nweak or arrogant,
\nbrave or coward,
\nwhen you wish it…
\nYou heard that before but never believed it…
\nWhat can your image be in a mirror-less country? You will ask yourself, again, and will find out only if you let the answer come by itself.
\nWhat can you lose
\nwhen the only possible reality is your quest?
\nWhich way to go\u2014
\nthe traveler asks,
\nunaware it is the only road to follow…
\nAnd where to go
\nif he is already there\u2014 even if he doesn\u2019t know yet who will win…
\nWhat competition is more feared than when you are
\nthe only stubborn player?
\nBut how can you keep fighting when your opponent wears only your image
\nas his lucky charm?
\n\u201cAbandon all hope\u201d you were told\u2014 so you really can hope!<\/p>\n

But tell me, what good is hope for one who has everything, or knows the way back
\nwhen he has already arrived?<\/p>\n

WHEN EVERYTHING IS LOST
\nThe clock did not stop
\nbut hours no longer show
\non Time\u2019s dial, which has come to a standstill, contemplating.
\nPerspective still works,
\nbut objects are no longer clear against the pure expanse
\nof unnamed Space.
\nLife has not ended but death
\nno longer looms at the horizon
\nwaiting for someone to rise up sometime, somewhere, in the land of oblivion…
\nEverything is as it used to be though nothing has meaning when lost in a timeless space, in a spaceless time…<\/p>\n

THAT INSTANT
\nA few words, you told yourself,
\njust a few\u2014and created
\na story whose present
\nis yesterday by now, just as tomorrow will be past for another story
\nleft behind, lost forever…
\nOne word, you told yourself,
\njust one\u2014 and you are on your way the unknown,
\nthat unexpected step, free
\nto think of who you are and are not,<\/p>\n

of that instant in which you can become and be you.<\/p>\n

HYMN TO LIFE
\nI
\nWe long forever for the Sea from the sea of Remembrance We long for the Distance
\nfrom the distance to the Horizon
\nWe long forever for the Sky from the sky of Memory
\nWe long for the Ephemeral from the ephemeral in Nature
\nWe long for the unborn
\nIn what is born
\nOr the unknown \/(unrecognized \u2013in original) in what is known<\/p>\n

II
\nWithin you lies the poet Within you, poetry
\nWithin you lies the prophet Within you, the prophesy
\nWithin you lies the voice Within you the silence
\nWithin you lies the thought Within you the never-thought
\nWithin you the quest Within you the fathomless Within you the question Within you lies the answer<\/p>\n

III
\nNothing unchanged Nothing impermanent Nothing undiscovered Nothing ignorant<\/p>\n

IV
\nRemembrance lies hidden in all that is unknown Immortality is hidden
\nin all that has been lost
\nFind the truth
\nIn what was forgotten Only He is all-knowing of all that is created.<\/p>\n

HYMN TO SILENCE
\nHe who still longs to put
\nhis feelings into poetry,
\nwho is a guest at this royal banquet inspiring his humble fantasy
\nWho brings all he has as offering
\nto Him who is Life itself,
\nwho forever returns to the sources and learns anytime from the advice
\nOf anyone willing to teach him,
\nwho dares look on in silence\u2014
\nand find in random deeds
\nHim who, Alone, fully knows their pain
\nAnd keeps them alive through Love\u2014 who tries to capture in poems
\nthe living Essence hidden in secret potions, extracting from Life\u2019 canvas
\nWhat the Painter wished to show
\nthrough shadows on the Face of Immortality; who dares to speak to humankind
\nwith ephemeral verses
\nDipping his quill in mute despair, reviving hope, spreading with words his love of all there is
\nand all he has learned;<\/p>\n

Who once had so much to say
\nwith his contrived rhymes\u2014
\ncould he then write one more poem
\nthat is not the one of the endless Silence?
\nYOU
\nYou, night of night,
\nwho was before existence, where life sprung suddenly
\nbecause it had been there always,
\nlife that was to come
\nwith time
\nthrough all lives
\nthat are born and die incessantly…
\nYou, truth untold, because mere speech would hide you from our unknowing eyes, you live for us,
\nwithin us, unchanging, forever…
\nYou, sea of flames
\nthat never burn, only heal
\nwith their blazing light,
\nall powerful,
\nyour purifying waves
\ntransform the one who feels
\nin their murmur the pulse of life, ebb and flow,
\nmotion and stillness
\nwhole and void, alike \u2013
\nand yet
\nnone of those,
\nindescribable form
\nthat cannot be fathomed…<\/p>\n

My poem melts away
\nthrough the darkness surrounding you, through the deepening fog
\nthat forbids
\neven a glimpse
\nof your luminous face…<\/p>\n

English version by Adrian George Sahlean<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ELENA LILIANA POPESCU (1948, Turnu M\u0103gurele, Romania). PhD in Mathematics, Professor at the University of Bucharest, Romania. She is poet, translator, essayist and editor, member of the Writers’ Union of Romania and\u00a0Romania and abroad the Romanian PEN Centre. She has published 60 books of poetry and translations from English, French and Spanish, both in\u00a0poems, translated […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":3789,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[171,162],"tags":[],"book_author":[],"book_publisher":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iwabogdani.org\/sq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3183"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iwabogdani.org\/sq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iwabogdani.org\/sq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iwabogdani.org\/sq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iwabogdani.org\/sq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3183"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.iwabogdani.org\/sq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3788,"href":"https:\/\/www.iwabogdani.org\/sq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3183\/revisions\/3788"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iwabogdani.org\/sq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iwabogdani.org\/sq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iwabogdani.org\/sq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iwabogdani.org\/sq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3183"},{"taxonomy":"book_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iwabogdani.org\/sq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/book_author?post=3183"},{"taxonomy":"book_publisher","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iwabogdani.org\/sq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/book_publisher?post=3183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}