Peter Sragher, The Pandemia-Poem
A poem written in the midst of the pandemic when human contacts were reduced to the inner circle of the family and the supermarket people that were strangers to you. I was thinking about what would change after such an extraordinary situation in the mind & soul of people. Of myself. I was thinking how we would be changed by the restrictions of the pandemic. And it was not nice at all: people dying and being hospitalized, bearly breathing, relatives not allowed even at the burial, people dying alone in the hospitals. A strain of despair was felt in the air, in the air we all breathed, but that killed some of us.
And one day I wrote it all down, this feeling, in the spring that I had the feeling that came to the nature but avoided us, imprisoned at home, prisoners to fear, trying to live normally, although the normality was gone. We had to wear masks, but not like Zorro, the warrior, who had to hide from his enemies, but we had to hide from an unseen enemy.
Who did really how long this abnormality would last?
peter sragher – biobibliography
born in 1960, bucharest, romania. married to cristina with whom he has a boy, david-thomas. studied german & english at the bucharest university. rpesident of the bucharest branch-literary translations of ”the romanian writers’s union” and “grazer autorinnen- und autorenversammlung” – austria. poetry collections. de ce m-ai făcut sărutul urii (why did you make me the kiss of hate), du style publishing house, bucharest, 1995; vitrine (the showcase) – poetry-performance by peter sragher & saviana stănescu in six languages, director: theodora herghelegiu, music: lucian ban, bucharest, 1999; să facem und copil (let us have a baby), paralela 45 publishing house, bucharest, 2003; de ce m-ai făcut doamne / por qué me hiciste Dios, bilingual collection in romanian & spanish , translation by alexandru calciu, editions amb, bucharest, 2005; ascultă tăcerea vorbind / hear silence speaking, lapwing publishing house, bilingual collection – romanian & english, belfast, great britain, 2012 ; dimineața sărută genunchiul athenei (the morning kisses athina’s knee), brumar publishing house, timișoara, 2012; you are the dragon, bilingual collection, china renmin university press, beijing, 2019; in defence of the cherries / în apărarea cireșelor, (with claus ankersen), bilingual collection, brumar publishing house, timișoara, 2019; akropolis – the ascension, bilingual collection, vakxikon media & publishing group, athens, 2019; prose. cartea lui david (the book of david), with watercolours by david-thomas sragher, brumar publishing house, timișoara, 2017. translations from austrian contemporary poetry: bernhard widder, ernst david, gerhard kofler, bruno weinhals şi christian loidl (in bilingual and trilingual editions). festivals. of poetry in his country and abroad. photo exhibition. În 2007 – black & white photography living wood, broken wood, dead dead wood in prater & lobau – austria at «the museum of the city of bucharest ». coordinator. of the only review about literary translation in romania, ”revista de traduceri literare” (https://www. fitralit.ro/revista ) that appears monthly online and of the ”colloquiums of literary translations”.
