Flavia Cosma's "Leaves of a Diary"

Romanian-Canadian singer, I peel and leaf
Your Leaves of a Diary, these tantalizing, entrancing
Translations into English of a Latin language, one
I hear from you, when you speak or recite, is so beautiful,
These belle-lettres against our bellicose trilling
Of war, war, war. Maybe that's why these verses sound
So achingly of Anna Akhmatova (nee Gorenko),
Who heard and recited the creepy tragedy of Gulag elegies...

I also see in your imagist 'fairy' tales glimpses
Of that shy, mysterious US Civil War poet
Who refuses to talk about the carnage, namely,
Emily Dickinson of the primal metaphysics,
The impassioned airs, the impish arias...
(One requires soldiers' eyes to detect Dickinson's
Raw meat soul and carnal spirituals).

But Flavia, it's not just Akhmatova and Dickinson
Your glamorous lyricism trumpets, but also that Quebecois poetess,
Marie Uguay, now sadly dead as Plath, though
I believe it was from cancer, not suicide,
Way back in fatal 1981, and not before
She had finished wry, solemn, surrealistic epigrams,
That detonated into Canuck English as unignorably
As those assassins' bullets entered Ceauşescu.

Ah, Flavia, your poetry recovers the Gospel of Paul,
A possibility for salvation, for resurrection, right out of
Collisions of contradiction. Ain't there such soft
Questioning, harsh love, fragrant evil, plush divinity,
Curious hurt, maimed innocence, angry flavors,
Political plagues, anorexia nervosa, manic
Depression, morbid boredom, sooty morals,
Champagne blues, gilded muck, delirium tremens,
Melancholy alcohol, dazzling terror, storybook spasms,
Drowsy murderers, tar-stuck stars, classic bleeding,
Sweaty bliss, vinegar'd sunlight, cyanide nectar, et cetera,

In your snapshots of vulturous angels, clumsy vampires,
Leprous lyres, obscene perfumes, and nests of pain;
To read you is to excavate Beauty...