IOANA COSMA - POEMS

Ioana Cosma is an English lecturer at the Department of Translation Studies from the University of Pitesti. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Toronto on the figure of the angel in Modernist literature. She conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Bucharest on the concept of forgetting in Modern literature and philosophy. Her first volume of poetry is forthcoming with the Institutul European Publishing House in Romania
Email: [email protected]

​In Time and through Matter

In time, and through matter
      by meter and rhyme,
the solace of discrete words,
      and music of wine,

the mare of night
    and nightingale
obeyed once more their piper,
relapsing in time.

​

Trees build Bridges
​

Trees build bridges
cities build tree-dumps
i still remember the time
you told me you loved
my nature vs. culture
picture now pasted on
my Toronto memories like
my Cluj memories where
we played guitars
under the bridge beneath
sad willow trees that
sang with us a song of
rebellion and redemption.

Pure and Simple
​

that leaf, petite and bright green

shone in the pile
of brown broken leaves

in the improvised park where we polished
our words and friendly gestures

that fall your kid danced to the
song I'd played pure and simple

like warm, 5 am baker's bread

we ate on the way back home

​

​The Time Travel of Being

The 'is' of being lies
in the banishing of 'I's'
like a shy monk's gaze
on a Renaissance painting
springing forth within the
'was' of ever the mind's dream
into new day's creation a
single unit of congruity
with the first 'shall be'.

The Human Imprint
​

As flakes of ash descended
on the buildings' walls, caressing
the faces imprinted on the whitewash
bricks, the sun glowed violent and bleak,
the houses began their mourning.

The children's playground became a
hollow circle, the lovers' kiss a cindery
convulsion. Those who remained
drew symbols in the ash and wept.

The shadows' impression on the
charred walls bespoke mankind's
century-old sublimation: instead of
trace, X-ray, instead of human remains,
a pile of ash to fit an infant's fist.

​