GERMAIN DROOGENBROODT
I just returned from the International Poetry Festival Mihai Eminescu in Romania where I was granted the “Gran Premio Mihai Eminescu”. So far, we published the Poem of the Week in Chinese, Dutch, English, Italian, Roman and Spanish and sent it weekly to more than 6000 readers all over the world with no other goal than to offer our readers weekly a handful of beautiful words which neither political leaders nor the media offer. Two Romanian poetry magazines also publish the Poem of the Week, so do the Italian magazine Margutte, the Casa della Poesia in Como. Others put them on their website, on their face book, on their Blogs or send the poems to their friends and contacts.
At the Poetry Festival Mihai Eminescu I met several poets who offered to translate the Poem of the Week in their language and have it sent to their contacts: in Arab, in Farsi (Iran), in Japanese, in Russian, in Turk and in Greek so that the Poem of the Week soon will be sent and distributed in 12 languages.
Poetry will not change the world, but a poem may give, to those who need it, a glimpse of light.
Photo Germain Droogenbroodt
NIGHTFALL
Indecipherable
the dark figures
of the night
neither at the mountainside
the signs, the flight
of a lonely bird
so late, above the lake
nor the convulsion of silvery light
that breaks through the darkness
illuminating the mountains
and till heaven spans
—just for a moment
an ephemeral color arc.
GERMAIN DROOGENBROODT (Belgium-Spain)
Translation: Germain Droogenbroodt & Stanley H. Barkan, Poet/Publisher
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