Symmetries: Selected Poems

Here are fifty-four poems by the Romanian poet Marin Sorescu. The poems were written (to quote the poet) "So that researchers of the year 4000 / Will certify that I existed / Around the middle of the 20th Century. / More or less." They are characterized by irony—"We wonder at nothing, / We make constant progress"—and a sense of surprise—"We learned at every turn / To be everlasting." Symmetries has been translated by John Robert Colombo, a Toronto poet and editor, and Petronela Negosanu, a Bucharest translator and writer.