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: c_ioana05@yahoo.com

Bande à part
​

​Chased one another
In Pompidou until
The image surfaced
The vision lines
Coalesced and unworldly
Color penetrated the iris
The heart crumbled
The mind was overwhelmed.
The tears in our eyes
Spoke of all the images
We had not yet seen
And may never come to see
Of all that’s lost
In the fleeting glimpse.

Fear and Trembling in Ghent
​

​ 
Saw the blood dripping
From the sacrificial lamb
On Van Eick’s altar painting.
Saw the chalices prepared
Everyone waiting nervously
For redemption.
 
Fear and trembling in Ghent,
The never-ending sacrifice
The civil thirst for blood
the headphones bursting
with soothing music.
 

Fearful Symmetry
​

​The form took
Its contour
From the
Builder’s dream
Of sea-washed shells.
And emerged
Into existence
Blameless and bleached
With no heavy load to carry
But the graven image.
 

The Cypresses
​

​Thing-image-script
You said
And the vital object
The static film
L’Estaque en rêve
Became apparent
Like a premonition
Of the world disappearing.
 
 

Upon leaving Toronto
​

​ 
Boarded the plane
In a hurry like thieves
Watched out the window
In the unresponsive night
The fear of looking back
Even now.
Maybe Euridice will
Come back from the dead.