Poem

Răzvan Ţupa

Side by side

EXTENDED PLAY

at first you can’t believe that a man changes his face every two minutes and you see only whatever you brought from home your breathing gradually usurps every body then it usurps everything that defines your coordinates there in front of your yellow cup of coffee for just a few moments our thoughts hung in the air balanced on the tenuous melody of breath that’s all

LANGZAAM

aanvankelijk kun je niet geloven dat een mens om de twee minuten van gezicht verandert en je ziet enkel wat je van huis hebt meegebracht je ademhaling neemt geleidelijk elk lijf in beslag en daarna alles wat je positie bepaalt vóór de gele koffiemok voor even slechts hingen onze gedachten aan de broze melodie van de ademhaling dat is alles

LENT

nu îţi vine să crezi la început că un om îşi schimbă o faţă cu alta la fiecare două minute şi nu vezi decât ce ai adus de acasă respiraţia ta ocupă treptat fiecare trup apoi ocupă tot ce îţi stabileşte poziţia în faţa cănii galbene de cafea doar câteva momente gândurile noastre erau suspendate pe melodia fragilă a respiraţiei asta-i tot

Răzvan Ţupa

(Romania, 1975)

Among the most important Romanian literary figures who began publishing after 2000, a decade after the fall of communism, Răzvan Ţupa (born in Brăila, a city on the Danube in eastern Romania) is indeed a prime example of his own critique of ‘the problem of generations’ remarked upon in a 2007 entry on his then-website, romanianbodies.blogspot.com: ‘the usage of the term . . . proved to work ag...