Translator’s Note

The title (which translates as The Lion’s Mouth) alludes to the lionhead-shaped mailboxes found in Venice in medieval times, which were used to file complaints or tip off crimes anonymously. In the poem, the reference serves as a masked indictment of Ceausescu’s Communist regime, whose political climate of fear was fueled by the Securitate—Romania’s repressive secret police force—which relied on citizens reporting each other’s crimes. Marin Sorescu camouflaged his thoughts on the dictatorship as witty poems rich in double meanings. As the Times Literary Supplement wrote: “His reactions to an increasingly absurd political regime were always cleverly balanced: he never engaged in the servile praise of leader and party usually required of Romanian poets, but nor did he venture into dissidence. He was content to let irony do its job […] His texts are masterpieces of allusion and adroit maneuvering […]” The poem not only reveals Sorescu’s depth of thought and highly associative mind, but above all his ability to convey the most complex emotions and contemplations into a multi-layered poetry that remains accessible to all, and which appears only too relevant in today’s international political context. 

Daniel Carden Nemo