The Death of the Deer

The drought has killed the wind’s last breath,
The melted sun flowed on the earth facing its death,
The sky is hot, empty, and void,
The old wells are full of mud, destroyed,
The forest is suffering, so many fires,
dancing with diabolical desires.

I follow my father up on the hill,
The evil pine trees cut deep wounds causing me many pains,
Together, we go silently to hunt our deer,
The hunt of starvation in the Carpathian Mountains.
The thirst shatters me. The drips of water
are boiling on the rock.
My temple is pressing on my shoulder.
On a new, huge, heavy,
on the unknown planet, I walk.

We’re waiting in a place where the springs are still singing,
With their smooth, magical strings to the ear,
By dusk, moon and silence clinging,
Here will come in droves, to drink, one by one the deer.

I tell my father I’m thirsty, beckons me to shut up,
Oh, dizzying water, the clearest one I saw,
I feel thirst-bound to you. You’re condemned to death
by rules, traditions, and by natural law.

The valley breathes with a faint rustle.
What a terrible evening floats in the universe!
The blood is flowing on the horizon, and my chest is red
as if I wiped my bloody hand on it from this curse.

Ferns burn with purple flames, I can see the altar, I can hear the drum,
Even some astonished stars blinking are crying,
How much I wish that you would not come, you would not come,
The beautiful offering of my forest, you are dying!

She jumped up, and then stood still,
She fearfully gazed around for a moment,
Her thin nostrils made the water thrill
in a rusty circling movement.

I saw in her wet eyes confusion,
I knew that she would suffer, that her death is near,
It was like reliving a myth, a wild dream, an illusion,
the story about the girl turned into a deer.
From above, the pale lunar light
sifted cherry blossoms on her warm fur,
Ah, how I wished that for the first time that night,
the bullet from my father's rifle to miss the target, to miss her!

Suddenly, the valleys roared. Kneeling,
she raised her head and shook it to the stars,
Then she collapsed stirring
black swarms of beads on the water, her scars.
A bluebird, from the branches, is flying free from all,
The life of the sweet deer toward the eternal rest
it had flown, screaming like a bird, leaving in the fall
her empty, dry, deserted nest.
Stumbling, I closed her shady, sadly eyes
guarded by her horns somehow discreet,
I winced silently, vivid like a ghost when my father
proudly shouted: We have meat!

I tell my father I’m thirsty, beckons me to drink,
Oh, dizzying water, the darkest one I saw,
I feel thirst-bound to you. You are already dead
because of rules, traditions, and because of natural law.
The law is useless, full of shades,
When life in us so quickly fades,
Traditions and mercies are just echoes flying,
When my sister is hungry, sick, and dying.

The smoke is coming silently from my father’s gun,
Without any wind, the scared leaves wildly run and run!
My father makes a frightening fire,
The forest trees sing in the saddest choir!
I catch from herbs, unknowingly, and I cannot tell,
a little silver tinkling bell.
With his bare hands, out of the skewer, dad had set apart
the deer’s kidneys and her roasted heart.

What’s your problem, heart? I’m hungry! I want to live, to conquer fear!
Please forgive me, virgin, maiden, my beautiful deer!
I’m sleepy. How high is the fire! I hear the forest beat!
I cry. What is my father thinking? I eat and cry. I eat!