Comments for Weekly Romanian Kukai no. 422

First Place – Argentina Stanciu

snow falls over the crosses -

on grandmother’s tapestry

the unfinished poppies

Two images whose tension increases when they are placed one next to the other, through the power of the silence where the allusions are at work, amplifying the little that is said in concentric, full of vibrations, contexts.

White and black (burial colour) in a vital contrast with the red poppies. The colors are present only elliptically, in remembrance of the snow, cross and flowers on the embroidered frame. The grandmother’s absence is suggested only by the presence of the cemetery and of stopped work, on the unfinished poppies on the tapestry, just before they were being finished. The natural touch to the discrete and fluent utterance of two simple and candid observations. Two pictures whose tension increases when they are placed side by side in the silence through which the allusions are working, amplifying what is said (very little, actually) in concentric, full of vibration, contexts.

Second Place – Costin Iliescu

poor tenant -

a cricket pays

bit by bit

From the outset, the poor tenant is a performance of a wealth of meaning. No, it is not the summer cricket, careless singing all night. It's the one of the fable and ballad, sheltered somewhere in a nook of the house, singing sadly intermittently, ashamed that it had to compromise and to find a shelter for the winter.

Payment is really all he knows to do – its song. He may not be able to do something more beneficial. Bit by bit means something small and weak (“black, small, dipped in ink and dusted with frost on its wings”), a little, a bit, bit by bit. Something that is insignificant is compensated by noise and repetition (like a mosquito buzzing nervously and weakly, due to its constitution). How to pay otherwise than bit by bit, with song, trembling, flashing...

without wood -

next to the fireplace the old man’s

creaking bones

Cristian D.

The wood that should be creaking in the fireplace is absent.  The creaking of the old bones does not compensate for the lack of heat and, if the fingers are those that creak, we know that the old man is in big trouble.

(Corneliu Traian Atanasiu)