We’ve been there

the silence of reeds

all around us

the talisman 

being offered

veiled in its own

expectation

that something     will 

finally move

after centuries

of stillness

that a breeze      will

glide over it

or a ray of the setting sun

ineffably acquainted

from ancient mornings

when we were

grains of sand

and had forgotten

how to kiss

Victor Pambuccian is a professor of mathematics at Arizona State University. His poetry translations, from Romanian, French, and German, have appeared in Words Without Borders, Two Lines, International Poetry Review, Pleiades, and Black Sun Lit. A bilingual anthology of Rumanian avant-garde poetry, with his translations, for which he received a 2017 NEA Translation grant, was published in 2018.