On the Stadium

Andra Toropoc
In the stillness of the night he could hear that wail of the stands from the match when he had missed the decisive penalty. On home ground his team had lost the cup and everything went downhill. He drank away his trouble, he gave up his house, his girlfriend and his pride. He lived in the locker rooms, tolerated for the long-ago victories brought to the club. Only in the evening would he went out on the lawn, sit at the lime-point and stared. He wanted to hang himself, but the gate that had broken his career broke under his weight. And under the unfavourable bar he cried once more.

Yuka Brevi
I was at the stadium. I had barely found a few more tickets. We shouted full of emotion: Mai-căl, Mai-căl. He was late. Of course, he was a star. I sat down, smoked three more cigarettes, then shouted again. Mai-căl. I get angry and yell: If he doesn't come in five minutes, I'm leaving. Silence. The whole stadium turns to me in a worried whisper. And we, we, we, it echoes. In exactly five minutes we were all rushing for the exit, even though Michael had climbed onto the stage and was showing dirty Diana in a bad light. No one was interested anymore. Bye.
 
 Sorin Rizeanu
Il mondo è come un'arena di gladiatori, in cui la vita lotta contro se stessa. Lucian, with his face troubled by doubt, reads Seneca in the garden. The world is a vice that creeps into your soul, he thought. The stadium world makes you selfish, self-indulgent. And cruel, because you enjoy the defeat of other people. Like gladiators, humans think they have a kind of freedom in this kind of death. In the shadows, the grass scorched under his feet. And they call me the Fallen One, he laughed, spreading his black wings.

(Translated by Ioana Andreea Radu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)