1. if I were a sceptic and a pessimist,
the interiour of a strawberry would be
a little wooden box. you sell everything
on another’s account and only stains remain,
shame, blackmail, fears, estrangement
in “the servile mind of an inferiour species of sheep” (i),
incapable of remembering, of forgetting
the almost empty platform echoing
the muffled whistle of the wandering child’s cry,
embraced only on the phone or in dreams.

2. if I were just a dreamer,
the beauty itself would be a strawberry picker
gazing out of the plane window in the east
reaching out its arms in the darkness,
picking the freckled fruit time
and again. it would taste them one by one,
listening to her speaking alone,
until her lips go crimson, wrapping her
in happy oblivion with all the white cloud
behind her back.

3. but I am practical as well.
I would explore the cloud foam closer.
here our strawberry picker is shampooing
her hair madly, is soaping her breast
in press conferences, with the political brush
she is rubbing her essential dirt on her back,
is lathering her thighs with ideological sponges,
is scrubbing her heels with the pumice stone
of psychoanalysis, is washing out and wipe
with the towel of pure theory, drying her hair
with the dryier of a new idea, and at last
is creaming herself with poems, scenting
herself puff, puff into a melody.


(i) from a comment to a piece of news published this year in a Romanian newspaper