Teologie pentru azi

Pr. Dr. Dorin Octavian Picioruș

Fragrance

(novel)

*

The Police car summons you and you stop in panic. Documents at control! is your obsession. You don’t know who you’re dealing with, you don’t know who’s in front of you. The interrogation begins, although no one calls it that. You try to be rational, to be sober, to lie like a book, the Policeman pushes the law down your throat. As in court, the answers cannot be random, even if the questions may be abrupt. And the questions started at School, where you thought you were being asked about form and not as a preparation for life, for life on your own. To the question about the theme, you had to say what you wrote in your notebook. According as, when your parents asked you if you have homework for School, they weren’t interested in homework, but they were interested in you doing your homework. And everyone expects us to do our homework, to remember the address on our ID card, as if, if I messed up, I would live at a different address than the one on my documents, and the homework solution gets a high grade, if it’s original. But what does it mean to be original in a few sentences about an author or a book? To know this, you must have read something about them or some of their work. And the way you perceive them is your originality, it’s the naturalness in which you see and expose the things.

The Police officer insists on whether you have been drinking or using drugs. Sometimes the answer is enough, he believes you like that, all of a sudden, while other times you are suspicious and you are made to do all kinds of tests. The tone of your voice, the answers, how you look at face, what you’re wearing, what the car looks like inside and out, how you drove there, all matter. And if you answer like you did in School, with stupid jokes, you’ll lose your license, but also get a large fine. And it’s in vain that you beg the Policeman to forgive you, to overlook you, his camera is already filming you and taking everything to headquarters. Which doesn’t mean that, somewhere, the path of truth can’t be short-circuited. In comparison with the Truth, Which is a person and not an idea, our subjective truths can be distorted in many ways. What I say about myself may be uncredited, because you have more props at fence. And, until the situation is clarified, you can spend many years in prison, and then demand enormous compensation from the State. But the financial compensations doesn’t give you your life back, it doesn’t give you any of your joy and fulfillment, because you, old and ruined inside, have no other solution than the solution of salvation. For there, on the last hundred meters, you redeem your life through repentance, and leaving prison means breathing a sigh of relief and with godliness, breathing the freedom of your salvation.

After the Divine Liturgy of the day and after the local proclamation of his canonization, the first worship of Saint Sofian Boghiu, our Father, was a great fulfillment, an inner relief. Of course, I didn’t like that I kissed the glass and not his Holy Relics, but my comfort was that I saw part of them, removed from the iconographic vestment above. I never spoke to him, but I saw him up close. While he was white and full of decency and known by many. And the question of many, asked or not asked, is how do you get from what you do and what you say to your canonization? Because many saw him, stood next to him, confessed to him, were indifferent to him, fought with him internally, and now they must honor him as a Saint. And many don’t, they can’t honor him in their heart, because they still minimize him. They have the same shortsighted perspective of him, where they haven’t seen anything special about him their whole life. But he, then and now, was and is the Saint of God, and many do not understand why, through what, how he reached sainthood? And the questions are not superfluous, because the continuous inner change of man, the ghostual one, is not a metaphor, but the everyday reality of the holy life. And when it happens in you, anyone can deny you in appearance, but not in reality. For the ontological reality of the ghostual man is the holiness. But if you live only in the magma of sin, that is why you do not understand how the Saint is full of holiness now, while he lives with us, and you cannot see the divine life in himself.

Pr. Dr. Dorin Octavian Picioruș

Traduceri poetice

(vol. 1)

*

Elena Simion[1], Write about me, I’m dying of thirst

 

I was nine years old in total
when I saw the Thriller video on TV,
and up until then the hottest event
of the year was the Resurrection,
when my grandmother would take my hand
and I would do balancing exercises
so that the holy light wouldn’t go out.

Some were walking up the hills
to the cemetery –
to bring the light of Resurrection
to those who had been in darkness
for so long: and I always wondered
how time passed for them;
was it like iguanas who live 16 years
in a human year? Or like
the depressed man who lives
an eternity in a human year?

But it was beautiful,
we sang:
♫ Hristos is risen from the dead,
by death trampling death,
and to those in the tombs
granting life!♫

– and I could always nestle
in my grandmother’s scarf
like a supreme force against
the little children,
who were trying to burn my hair
with the candle.

I believe that from time to time
God comes down to earth
and lives a human life just like we do
(it would be suspicious to see
someone’s mother going
to meetings on a cloud).

I think the last time was my grandmother,
who never learned to write or read,
or maybe it was an excuse for me
to learn to read the subtitles
on the palace legends faster after school.

In elementary School,
I would see boys jumping over
cemetery fences to pick carnations
and whatever else the living planted
on the mounds of earth
to give to the girls,
who were already putting on mascara
and putting sponges in their bras.
I felt sorry for the deceased
like a stupid dog, when a faster one comes
and steals his piece of bread
and he sits there
without eating for another day.

 

Elena Gabriela Crângașu[2],

The ambulance sometimes doesn’t even come

 

Almost forty, young,
but at the end of the cognitive dimension.
The most interesting activity
in Maria’s routine is
hanging out the laundry.
Almost forty and depression,
handfuls of pills,
sometimes she forgets a pill,
the kids don’t know.
The husband pretends not to,
Maria still reads books sometimes.
With each new line,
she forgets what she read before,
and so on until the next day.

 

Miriam Penelopa Georgescu[3],

For my birthday, I received a test tube

 

that I carefully opened in the bathroom,
with kitchen gloves,
with an apron,
I was very scared,
I was saying Psalm 23.
I opened it.
I saw with a chinese magnifying glass
how I was going to die trying
to make a battery.
(When people have cancer,
they die, their world is a scratch-off map,
the cancer is scratched off
with a fifty-cent coin)
I threw the test tube in the toilet
and made a wish.

 

Răzvan Fugaciu[4], It’s good to forgive

 

all the slaps
you have received from people,
as Iisus did.
For, look,
He was blasphemed and
He forgave.
They whipped Him and
He laid down His life for us.
You must get used
to drinking the malice of those
around you every day.
Then you will know the quietness.

---

[1] Am tradus poemul de aici: https://revistagolan.com/poeziadegolan｜mi-e-teama-ca-ai-sa-mori-inaintea-mea-grupaj-inedit-de-elena-simion/.

[2] Am tradus poemul de aici: https://elenagabriela13.wordpress.com/2021/02/20/salvarea-uneori-nici-nu-vine/.

[3] Idem: https://revistagolan.com/ poeziadegolan｜de-ziua-mea-am-primit-o-eprubeta-doua-poeme-de-miriam-penelopa-georgescu/.

[4] Am tradus poemul de aici: https://revistagolan.com/ poeziadegolan｜in-general-accidentele-ma-linistesc-grupaj-inedit-de-razvan-fugaciu/.

Pr. Dr. Dorin Octavian Picioruș

Traduceri poetice

(vol. 1)

*

Ligia Keșișian[1], Climate and punishment

 

My son tells me –
NASA announced that in thirty years
we won’t be able to live
on this earth anymore,
it’ll definitely not make it to forty.
He asks me how you live
when you know you won’t live to be old.
He tells me I won’t have any grandchildren.
That would mean they would have
a much too short life
and it wouldn’t be fair to anyone.
I look at him guilty
because I too consumed plastic,
wasted electricity.
I have made a child who,
when he reaches my age,
no one will ask him
where you see yourself in five years,
who won’t have to worry about
the pension plan,
dementia and Alzheimer’s.
My son is nine years old
and he asks me what we are going to do
with the thirty we have left.
I tell him about the children
in Artsakh or Afghanistan,
and those thirty years of probable existence
begin to seem like a luxury.
I hug him –
a ball of helplessness
and noxiousnesses
takes our breath away.

 

Robert Șerban[2], Ars poetica

 

Poetry is the crazy fly that
no matter how loud it buzzes when it sees it,
no matter how green it turns when it feels it,
no matter how many circles it makes in flight,
no matter how close it gets to it,
no matter how feverishly it rubs its legs,
no matter how much it stretches its proboscis
it never eats
shit.

 

Codruța Simina[3], The poem for my daughter

 

Pay attention to the one who screamed so loudly
one day that the next day everyone spoke like him
– he is the one who defines the battle surface!
Parents are not equipped with the power
to transmit to their children,
while they are alive,
all the love they bear them.
There’s something wild
and bringer of fury in being
mother-father.
Poems don’t go
there very often either.
Neither do we.
The poems are my attempts
not to lie to you,
not even in time,
when I will become a voice
in your head.
I would do anything
to be a gentle voice,
your gentle voice.
I imagine that every parent sees
in their child this incredible reserve of beauty,
spread out into possible worlds.
Then,
speechless in the face of this evidence,
she repeated in bewilderment:
Are you hungry, mommy’s love?
Just clean your room and that’s it!
She does not save him
with the tears of this wonderful love.
Don’t call him the groin, the monster of fear!
May you never die, mommy’s love!
And this is perhaps the greatest betrayal
I leave you with:
the loneliness with the monster.
Here no one had parents and:
the monster diminishes
when you listen to the gentle voice.

 

Rebeca Marchiș[4], Counterpoint

 

I was a child, a crocodile and a doll;
an angel and a glove.
Now I’m a poorly thought-out,
terribly dynamic mosaic.
(„diver, director or cosmonaut”)
For you I am a lighthouse perhaps babylonian,
however, far placed.
For her I am a mirror, scratched, rust-colored.
I look for myself in the fields,
through raw or dry grass,
full of dandelions,
to walk the babyhood on my back once more.
What would it be like to find myself
as a child on the couch,
sitting in an old chair,
like grandma had in the garden?
Blowing like the bird
and with the gaze all gentle.
But I only see myself when I dance,
when I paint and when I create,
when I look into your eyes,
because your gaze always
returns to me
(hopefully without the evil eye).
When I feel myself popping,
but peacefully,
like a soap bubble,
without grotesque earthquakes,
just with the wind on which I float.
Smells, breezes and leaves carry me
with them without refusing me.
I remember that I am alive
and that everything in the world
is human.

---

[1] Am tradus poemul de aici:
https://revistavatra.org/2025/10/30/parada-debutantilor-ii/#more-15106.

[2] Am tradus poemul de aici:
https://revistavatra.org/2025/09/01/robert-serban-ars-poetica/.

[3] Am tradus poemul de aici:
https://www.scena9.ro/article/tot-ce-i-suav-produce-taieturi-codruta-simina-fragment-carte.

[4] L-am tradus de aici: https://revistaechinox.ro/2025/08/rebeca-marchis-poeme/.

Pr. Dr. Dorin Octavian Picioruș

Fragrance

(novel)

*

I know when I’m being lied to in front of my face, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be polite to thieves. Judges are attentive to both the lies of lawyers and those in question. The petitioner has his own interest, the lawyer has his own pocket to fill, the judge wants to close the case. The dust in the courtroom, the smells, the expectations have nothing to do with the truth, but with the cumbersome routine of the files. Instead of synthetic discussions, there are cumbersome discourses of evidentiary legislation. You need to have dictionaries with you, corpuses of laws, you need to know the tricks, to learn the cunning theater of pleadings. For, Your Honor, the above-named woman went on vacation with her child, but she forgot to notify her husband, as long as the child is in their custody, not just hers. But, if she took Alexandra with her, she also took her husband’s card and she did it dust. Because she didn’t just stop at food and a holiday menage, but bought clothes, perfumes, cosmetics, technology, jewelry…Her reason? Revenge on the husband!…For she considered the fact that there is an adventure in the middle. She accuses my client, Mr. Anghel Curticeanu, of a relationship, which in fact does not exist, with a 28-year-old woman, a PhD student in Medicine. For this assumption, the accused spent the amount of 300.000 lei in only 5 days of vacation. And yet, the judge insists, is there no relationship between the two? No, of course not!, said Lawyer Luminița Apoloniade, dressed that day in the pleading gown, as usual, but with an imperial red on her lips. But the judge, being the lawyer’s lover, knows that yes, there is a relationship, and one that has been going on for some time, but he can’t say this in public. Because what they say at home is one thing, but in public you have to follow customs.

And he asks, she pretends not to know, the trial goes on, after all the wife has the same money as you, her husband, and if she likes to spend, why did you take her as your wife? Can’t you see that she’s crazy to tie, Your Honor?! A responsible woman doesn’t spend that much money from a fire. But, Mr. Anghel, she is your wife! If she needs love or attention or medical support, you must decide for her or, better yet, in agreement with her. The marriage is not a detention cell, but a school of coexistence. We learn to live in two, plus our children, and to be responsible. And yes, I give you justice, that responsibility is the number 1 principle of living together, but the responsibility requires that there be no lies, omissions, or falsifications of the marital relationship.

It took 6 months for Anghel to admit that he was having an affair with the medical student, a blonde full of adventures, and that was when the blonde dumped him. He suffered another credit card liquidation before leaving. The romanian patron, who quickly makes money from dubious conjunctions, also quickly loses it. Sometimes at casinos, sometimes on women, sometimes on drugs. Because the reinvestments are frail. The State’s watchful eyes see or breathe too, so the patron does his job for a while. When he falls, he’s gone. Everyone forgets him, everyone kicks him, it becomes satire. The blonde, because she doesn’t invest, but only nibbles, passes her exams with a Professor who has fantasies. She doesn’t specialize in heavy surgery, because that’s where you need a head, but in putting teeth in. They make tons of money putting teeth in and putting silicone in. And if you want to eat your money, you get good assistants, to whom you throw as much as you need, no more, and they do all the work for you.

The novel starts off easy, it goes wherever you want, to the blonde’s grandmother, to her aunt from Târgoviște, a friend of hers was the son of a famous footballer, one evening she met an irish billionaire at a hotel, who knew 6 foreign languages, but also knew how to cover his tracks. You stop at the door of their room, or you move on with the description. Do you know everything or do you pretend not to know what’s going on? Is she everyone’s mistress or no one’s? The omniscience belongs to God, but false novelists assume that they are omniscient. And this is because they confuse the intrigue in their head with the endless depths of people. And if a personage does what he does and says what he says, these are not random, but they come out of the depths of people. Because they can do and say unexpected things.

Pr. Dr. Dorin Octavian Picioruș

Traduceri poetice

(vol. 1)

*

Mohamed Metwalli[1], Un poem cu dedicație

 

tradus, din arabă în engleză,
de Gretchen McCullough și
Mohamed Metwalli

Pentru un om obișnuit,
căruia nu-i păsa deloc de dezastrele
care se abat asupra lui,
pentru acea fericire modestă,
pe care acest om o găsește într-un bar,
pe timp de iarnă, fără luptă,
pentru o sticlă de bere scutită de taxe,
pentru o femeie care nu intenționează
să mă părăsească
în următoarele cinci minute,
pentru o glumă suficient de tare
cât să ne ridice hainele prăfuite
în interiorul unei taverne,
pentru interiorul unei taverne,
pentru un vis, fără vinovăție,
ca și cum ar fi fost un vameș,
pentru un poem strălucitor,
asemenea suprafeței unui lac,
ce nu va fi zgâriată de o pietricică
aruncată de un copil jucăuș,
pentru un moment de tăcere
și un schimb de priviri,
pentru un suflet fragil ca sticla,
crăpându-se în această tăcere
din cauza unei priviri pline de reproș,
pentru o relație anterioară
care nu provoacă
o durere de cap actuală,
pentru o vânătaie în coaste,
pe care am adăpostit-o
ca și cum ar fi fost un embrion mort,
pentru viața mea trecută,
care, probabil,
acum nu ar face rău nimănui,
pentru o femeie care m-a scos din depresie
fără să ceară nimic în schimb,
pentru o linie de tren veche
pe care toată lumea a uitat-o ​​intenționat,
pentru un scaun de lemn,
care a căzut în capul unui om obișnuit
– care îmi vorbea acum cinci minute –
și l-a ucis,
pentru cântăreți de operă
cu funduri grase și orizonturi înguste,
pentru feministe care mă vor învinovăți
că nu menționez o femeie
ca element activ în poem,
pentru o foaie albă și un creion
și libertatea unui copil de a povesti scena,
pentru un vis al unui pescar obișnuit,
sub un cer senin, într-un lac a cărui suprafață
nu va fi niciodată zgâriată de o pietricică,
pentru orașele de coastă, care au uitat
puii de rechin, caracatițele și poeții pescari,
pentru pisicile de pe stânci,
coșurile de paie găurite și
fortărețele istorice care se unesc
cu algele marine,
pentru un pescar care s-a eliberat
de ideea de a avea o iubită
și, prin urmare, a devenit obișnuit,
făcând acum posibil ca un scaun
din tavernă să-i spargă capul,
pentru un bucătar de coastă,
care a găsit o scrisoare de dragoste,
pe o hârtie galbenă care se dezintegra,
datată 1912,
și care și-a gătit ingredientele în supă de stridii
și le-a dat clienților săi,
care veneau din orașe îndepărtate,
pentru mirodeniile sale
care au schimbat gânduri și credințe,
pentru nisipul și celelalte litere îngropate ale sale,
pentru că m-am sprijinit de brațul ei,
când aveam o coastă învinețită,
refuzând să-mi recunosc slăbiciunea,
pentru noblețea ei,
nearătându-și puterea,
într-o dimineață însorită,
în drum spre mare,
pentru cei care au murit
într-o altă mare întunecată,
înainte de a-și rosti ultimele cuvinte,
pentru visele lor, care s-au înecat
la începutul secolului trecut
– de a nu rata niciun moment
de plăcere în viață,
pentru sufletele lor,
care îi vor bântui încontinuu
pe strangulatorii lor,
pentru Titanic, când el se despică,
pentru oricui îi place acest poem!

Fatemeh Shams[2], Traducere

tradus, din persană
în arabă, de Armen Davoudian[3]

 

Unde nu există „noi”, suntem
uneori buză lângă buză,
uneori depărtați,
uneori ochi lângă ochi,
uneori cu limba legată,
pierduți în geografia vagă a cuvintelor,
unde ne regăsim pe noi înșine din nou,
tu, vocea mea,
eu, bătăile inimii tale,
noi, nomazi ai limbii noastre materne
într-o altă limbă.

 

Belle Ling[4], Contemplând codul

 

Îmi amintesc de acea scurtă înserare:
un cod a ocolit șanțul
— era, cu siguranță, o speranță alunecoasă
spre stâncă — îl văzusem dansând.
Dar nu i-am putut zări șira spinării
când soarele se învârtea.
Și acum, în congelator,
e o fantomă rece care nu se micșorează.
Nu are nicio idee
de ce formează brumă.
— Peștii exprimă frica
într-o febră emoțională;
s-ar muta în ape mai calde
pentru a-și crește temperatura,
deoarece ard de stres.
Ca și mine, ei pot suferi. —
Înainte să pun mâinile
să clătesc codul și
să-i înfig frigăruia în branhii,
vreau să simt, din nou, cu degetele goale
— înstrăinătoarea, subțirea,
îndelunga oftare a picăturii de umezeală —
căci tu ai călătorit un drum lung.
Îmi pare rău.

 

Omar Sakr[5], Algo în genocid

 

Ok, nu voi folosi cuvântul evreu
și nu voi folosi cuvântul sionist
și nu voi folosi cuvântul genocid
și nu voi folosi cuvântul apartheid
și nu voi folosi cuvântul colonist
și nu voi folosi cuvântul colonie
și nu voi folosi cuvântul ucis
și nu voi folosi cuvântul pepene verde
și nu voi folosi cuvântul Palestina
și nu voi folosi cuvântul rezistență
și nu voi folosi cuvântul lege
și nu voi folosi cuvântul morală
și nu voi folosi cuvântul bărbați
și nu voi folosi cuvântul Dumnezeu
și nu voi folosi cuvântul râu
și nu voi folosi cuvântul mare
și nu voi folosi cuvântul liber
și nu voi folosi cuvântul copii,
căci tinerii din _____ sunt întotdeauna _____
Cu ce ​​rămânem la sfârșit?
Un dicționar ucis și un câmp,
după câmpul tăcut de morminte nemarcate.

---

[1] Am tradus poemul de aici, unde avem date despre autor și despre traducătoarea din limba arabă: https://worldliteraturetoday.org/2018/may/dedication-poem-mohamed-metwalli.

[2] Despre autoare: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/fatemeh-shams. Am tradus poemul de aici: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/1764404/translation.

[3] A se vedea despre traducător: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/armen-davoudian.

[4] Am tradus poemul de aici: https://poems.com/poem/contemplating-the-cod/. În partea de jos a paginii sunt datele despre autoare.

[5] Am tradus poemul de aici, unde găsim și date despre autor: https://poems.com/poem/algo-in-the-genocide/.