Marin Sorescu 'Fountains in the sea'

Apparently we are to have no water for the next two days while the HMWSSB does some maintenance work. Since they've chosen a water supply day to do their repairs, it means that on either side of today are two days when there is no supply anyway. 

So three days without water. 'No matter how much, there is still not enough.' 

 

    Fountains in the sea

    By Marin Sorescu

    Translated By Seamus Heaney and Ioana Russell-Gebbett

 

    Water: no matter how much, there is still not enough.

    Cunning life keeps asking for more and then a drop more.

    Our ankles are weighted with lead, we delve under the wave.

    We bend to our spades, we survive the force of the gusher.

    Our bodies fountain with sweat in the deeps of the sea,

    Our forehead aches and holds like a sunken prow.

    We are out of breath, divining the heart of the geyser,

    Constellations are bobbing like corks above on the swell.

    Earth is a waterwheel, the buckets go up and go down,

    But to keep the whole aqueous architecture standing its ground

    We must make a ring with our bodies and dance out a round

    On the dreamt eye of water, the dreamt eye of water, the dreamt eye of water.

    Water: no matter how much, there is still not enough.

    Come rain, come thunder, come deluged dams washed away,

    Our thirst is unquenchable. A cloud in the water’s a siren.

    We become two shades, deliquescent, drowning in song.

    My love, under the tall sky of hope

    Our love and our love alone

    Keeps dowsing for water.

    Sinking the well of each other, digging together.

    Each one the other’s phantom limb in the sea.

    
    “Fountains in the sea” from The Biggest Egg in the World by Marin Sorescu. Published by  Bloodaxe Books in 1987.