The Voice of the Mills - Ion Minulescu

Hear the voice of watermills,
Hear the windmills
On the hills,
Hear the voice of the stern mills
As they grind out the Romance
Of tomorrow
And tomorrow,
The bread-giving voice that dresses
In white garments
All that's hope and expectation,
All that's dream and aspiration,
Hear the voice of the stern mills
Grinding in and grinding out
From beneath the heavy stones
The same Song,
Hours on end and days on end,
Hear it,
Hear it all day long,
Listen to it with our awe in the hour of inspiration.
Learn to know it,
Learn to grasp it,
Learn to murmur it by rote,
Learn to sing it with the water,
Learn to sing it with the wind,
For it is the voice that leavens
And kneads Plenty through its song!
And when late at night their voices are all hushed
And all sound dies,
When in coffin-like millraces motionless the water lies,
When through the still sails, with sovereign nonchalance,
The wind goes on
As if through the ragged canvas of a drifting galleon,
When the millstone seems a seal
Dug up from the dusted over parchments of old princely charters,
Think of how the germination
Of the winter corn will sprout
From beneath the heavy millstones
All that's hope and expectation,
All that's dream and aspiration,
And remember and rejoice
At the voice that's grinding out
The Romance of our tomorrows,
At the stern bread-giving voice!

The Heart's Romance - Ion Minulescu

Oh, Heart, broken bucket, say
Whose thirst can you now allay
When there's none to pass your well
And from you his thirst to quell
With fresh water good for charms
To cure one from ills and harms?

Oh, Heart, empty bucket, say,
Who daubed you with tar and clay
And hid you in the back yard
From all mortal eyesight barred
Lest they beg your water clear
When their tongues are parched and sere?

Oh, my bucket, something else
Give me for a drink that quells
Since cool water you have none
It was quaffed by everyone!
Give me what's for me alone,
One drop of quick water, one!

Romance of the Newcomer - Ion Minulescu

"You stranger knocking at the gate,
Whence do you come
And who are you? -
You stranger to this world of ours,
Answer and say,
Whence can you be?
Through what worlds did you live the nightmare
of stories untold hitherto,
From what star, tell us, did you borrow
the hue of pale insanity? -"

"Whence do I come ? -
Where can I come from when my eyes
Full of regrets and burning grief
Are like two votive candles lit
to the dead poets in their crypt?
My sandals are worn out, behold!
The toga that Apollo gave me
The night I set out towards you
Can hardly flutter now its blue
over my shoulders bare and cold."

"I'm bare -
For long has been my journey,
And on my way, along the road,
I met all those who tried to sell you
New gems which can't and won't be sold,
Who tried to sing you new romances,
To guide you to a higher thing,
That beauty one can only guess
In the eternal harmonies
Between an end
And endlessness -
Those who have brought for you the light,
Those whom you have received with hatred,
Whom you hae stoned away
With stones
That will become their pedestals
The moment the inebriation of new ideals carries you! -"

"Where do I come from?
Oh, the world that lies beyond the known horizon,
A world that has been never trodden by any one of you,
I come
From where the sky is not your blue,
The trees are not this green of yours,
From where the Nymphs await the coming on the lawns
Of naked Fawns,
The world of goblets always empty
Yet brimful all at any time,
The world of the last song sublime
Borne on the wings of snow-white storks
From shore to shore,
From land to land,
From man to man,
From mouth to mouth,
The far-off land of the four winds
From east and west and north and south! -"

"Open the gate, then,
And come forth
To welcome me with laurel leaves,
And you who measure in your verse immeasurable thoughts,
Oh come,
Gather round me
And to the strains
Of golden lyres march forth with me
Towards the world where there will be
No feudal moats, no drawbridge castles,
No rusty copper gates at which
Newcomers knock,
Come all of you while there isi time
And while you can still sing,
Oh come! - "

"Come, let me kindle in your hearts
the flame of long extinguished torches
And in your verse the fantasy
And charm of art's new wizardry!
And let me crown your songs whereby
Today you beg a humble dole
With the resplendent brilliancy of your tomorrow's aureole!"

But at the voice of future art, deaf and shut fast remained the gate...

It was, if I remember well, about the year nineteen-o-eight.