Metropolis

Horațiu Dudău
I set out to discover the big city. A new, strange world. Especially the bar where I stopped in the evenings and where the guys fought like the young men in my village. I drank my beer at the counter, polite, attentive, non-violent. I couldn't leave anyway. Someone always held the door from the outside. They deliberately avoided me, and that intrigued me. One evening, a toothless man stopped the brawl and told me, timidly, to send his regards to my brother, Neluțu. I am an only child. That's why I like the city. It's the place where no one knows for sure who you belong to.

Titela Durnea
I can almost hear old man T. saying, You rascals, I'm telling you, be careful what you wish for. And he would start telling his story: a forest conquered by a lively foot, books received from his uncle, dreams chewed with saliva, regurgitated among the concrete that touched the sky. And then the gray shadow, which made it impossible to see blue, or green, or yellow. The longing for air. The return to the forest. The soul revived. And we listened with our mouths and hearts wide open as he invariably concluded, The circle spins even if it's square, because that's all it knows.
 
 Monica Ciurea
If I hadn't dragged myself here, I wouldn't have met you, my soul's executioner. With two matches and three compatibilities, you seduced me, and we hastily made our cocoon in a skyscraper. It seemed that within its narrow walls, silks were being woven for us. By day, I whispered that the overcrowded sidewalks would swallow our wings, while you recklessly spent your flight, a frightened skull for so many eyes. In the evening, we lived our dream of kissing blindly between two neon signs. At night, we climbed onto rooftops. To dream that we were living.

(Translated by Diana Georgiana Rădăcineanu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)