Troubled stars

troubled stars –

ephemerides’ dance

above the puddle

Vasile Coniosi-Mestesanu

The structure of the poem looks so simple. It makes use of a sharp contrast between the stars -  fixed and everlasting (at least according to the precarious earthly duration idea) - and the ephemerides - flying relentlessly, living just one day. Technically, it makes use of the so frequent mirroring in the water process. By dancing, the ephemerides perform their ritual, but they also wrinkle the water’s surface. The result is the disruption of the water’s mirroring function and, consequently, a less sharp and oscillating image of the stars.

Anyone, even those who do not understand haiku poems quite well, will feel, in the phrase troubled stars, the allusion to the sad fate of the ephemerides. Cool-headed as the stars may be, the trembling puddle did give away their being troubled.

I should draw attention to the unpretentious, unaffected, unladen, sober way in which the images are presented. No insinuating focus is placed over what is evoked. The allusions do not begin from the subjective intention of the author. The allusions are born only out of the objective aura of the poems’ elements. And from the intersection and interference effects of their semantic fields.

Feeling troubled is not, from the outset, emotion (worry, unrest). It is, firstly, a whirling of the water’s clarity and loss of transparency caused by the ephemerides’ agitation. Disturbing the water/ the mirror are the insects themselves; their fleeting, troubled and turbulent fate will contaminate it, caught by the feeling of unrest, and it will be mirrored by it.

(Corneliu Traian Atanasiu)