writing from Romania


author events:

by Nichita Danilov

translated from the Romanian by Sean Cotter

CYRIL

Cyril the monk lives inside a well and writes a black psalter. He has lived there since the age of Constantine. Around him, the water has parted, leaving the walls wet and cold. He warms his hands from time to time at a stone lamp. On the right corner of his table, a blind bird pecks at a small plate of seeds.

I lean over the side of the well, and watch him, very carefully: everything that he writes, I copy into another psalter. Occasionally he raises his eyes toward me, but he does not say anything.

Sometimes the water ripples, and I cannot see what he is writing. Then I have to lean farther over the edge.
Other times the water thickens into clay, then cracks.
Other times it boils like lava and spits fire.
Then it slowly cools into stone,
and I wait. I sit on the well and wait
for the stone to turn back into water.
Sometimes it snows.
Large flakes fall into the well. They do not melt, as they normally do when they touch water. Instead they turn into silver and copper coins and stick
to the shaved scalp of Cyril the monk.

Cyril writes, but without feeling. I watch him very carefully: I cannot miss a word. Everything he writes, I copy into another psalter, using not
ink, but sand.
In front of me is an hourglass. I dip my quill in the stream of falling sand. I have to be exceptionally careful: any breath of wind
would erase everything I have written.
Someone else leans over me, copying what I write. If I look at him, he immediately puts his nose in his book, as if he is absorbed in reading.
He looks a little like both Cyril and me.
He often leans dangerously far over the well's edge. I yell at him to be careful not to fall down the shaft. He giggles at me like a crazy man.
He is Brother Ferapont.


FERAPONT

Above me is Brother Ferapont. His beard reaches down to his waist. He sees everything that I write. His linen shirt is tied around the middle with rope made
of linden bark. He looks very much like
Feodor Mihailovich Dostoevsky.

If I commit a small stylistic mistake, he drops a pebble on my head.
"Be careful, be careful, Brother Nichita," he says, "Be careful, that could be a costly mistake."
If I don't know exactly where to put a comma, or if I hesitate between a period and a comma, he corrects me.
"None of this matters at all," I tell him,
"In the modern Psalter, many punctuation marks are no longer used."
"Still, you should use them. You should. You never know. Who knows what the future will bring! You have to be very cautious, very careful. And another thing, you should fast more, attend more to yourself. Spend less time looking at women. If you want to become a Superior."
"None of this matters now," I respond,
"The times have changed, it's very different now. People don't fast any more. And about women ..."
"Even so, don't forget what I'm telling you. Be very, very careful ..."

Brother Ferapont has soft, blue eyes. Although he is a sad man, I have never seen him cry.
He has a deep, rich voice, and he knows many psalms.
I would like to wet my quill in the sadness of his gaze. But he is so far above me. However high I raise my hand, I cannot reach his eyes.
Above Brother Ferapont is Brother Lazarus.


LAZARUS

Above Brother Ferapont is Brother Lazarus.
There is no one above Brother Lazarus. He is truly alone. He looks neither outside nor inside, but he sees everything. Above him
there is no more well.
Brother Lazarus is sadder than Christ. Every day, part of his body rots off and falls down through the well.
Brother Ferapont writes his psalter
after wetting his quill in Lazarus's wounds.
His wounds are as clear as well-water.
They do not fester. He writes nothing.
But the blood that flows from his wounds
fills the well.
His sad gaze reaches down to me,
his voice reaches down softly. He has never chided me.
The well where I write is deep in one of his wounds. He opens his eyes, from time to time, to look at the Lazarus in the depths.
The other Lazarus is as feeble as this one.


DANIEL

Brother Daniel is still very young. He passes the days playing outside in the fields. He has yet to descend into the well.
His whiskers have not started to grow.
He has golden hair. He does not know what a woman is.
While playing in the fields, he feels a kind of weight on his chest. He occasionally takes out a small psalter and leafs through it, but he does not understand anything. He is accompanied at all times by a bird: a kind of falcon, but with the head of a lion and a serpent's tail.
The bird is perched on his right shoulder. Its eyes glow.
It can read and teaches Daniel to decipher the psalter.


Under the falcon's wings, the body of a woman shows through the feathers. The falcon feeds on sand and drinks the water from Brother Lazarus's wounds.
It looks a bit like Cyril's bird
just many times wiser.

On every new moon it flies into the well,
in its beak a new psalter for Brother Cyril.

Now, at the end of April, the fogs are gathering.


© Twisted Spoon Press
© Nichita Danilov
Translation © Sean Cotter

ISBN 978 80 86264 08 0
156 pp.
145 x 205mm
softcover with flaps
poetry (bilingual) & prose
€13.50

Price includes shipping
by airmail worldwide

Order in the US:
Amazon
Powells
SPD

Order in the UK:
Amazon UK
The Book Depository
Central Books

Copyright © 2009 Twisted Spoon Press