CONTEMPORARY SCOTTISH HORIZONS: MORELLE SMITH

Waiting in the Rain

Sometimes you wait a long time for buses,
in the rain.
Sometimes they won't come and –
they just won't come
and you walk on and they leave you
absurdly lonely.
Thinking all the street thoughts
and the wild ones
and the dancing ones and the ones
you hope that no-one else can see.

Buses are deep blessings
in the night.
Remember the feeling
of searching an empty street,
to find out if the bus
has left without you,
as if it did not know
it had a rendezvous with you –
or is still in the future,
on its way to meet you.
Come on street night, you say,
tell me if the bus
has passed this way already,
or is yet to come.

Aşteptând în ploaie

Câteodată aștepți mai mult după autobuze,
în ploaie.
Câteodată nu vin și –
pur și simplu nu vin
și o iei pe jos și te simți
foarte singur.
Gândești toate gândurile străzii
și pe cele mai nebunești
și pe cele care parcă dansează și pe cele
pe care speri că nimeni nu le vede.

Autobuzele sunt binecuvântări misterioase
în noapte.
Îți aduc aminte de simțul
de a cerceta o stradă pustie,
de a afla dacă autobuzul
a plecat fără tine,
ca și cum nu ar ști
că aveți o întâlnire –
sau poate e încă în viitor,
în drumul lui spre tine.
Vino pe strada nopții, zici tu,
spune-mi dacă autobuzul
a trecut pe aici deja,
sau trebuie să vină.

Morelle Smith, a Globe Trotter of Nowadays

  Morelle Smith was born in Edinburgh and studied English and French at Edinburgh University. She has worked as an Adult Education Tutor of English as a Second Language, French, and Creative Writing, and has been an aid worker in the Balkans.

  She writes poetry, fiction, non-fiction and travel articles. She has been awarded Writers Residencies in France, Switzerland and Serbia. She has been published in various print and online magazines and anthologies in the UK, Canada and Europe. Most recently she has contributed to The Evergreen, Chester Poets, Scottish Review, Times Literary Supplement (UK), Emails from India (Canada), New Eastern Europe (Poland), Recours au Poème (France), Contemporary Literary Horizon (Romania) and Terra Poetica (Ukraine).

  She recently took part in the Drini Poetik Festival in Prizren (Kosovo) and the Terra Poetica Festival in Kyiv, Rivne, Ostroh, and Zytomyr (Ukraine), where she received the Audience Award.

  She has published several books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, the most recent being Gold Tracks, Fallen Fruit (poetry, 2011), Tirana Papers: An Albanian Journal (non-fiction, 2013) and The Definition of Happiness (poetry, 2015).

  She is also a free-lance editor and translator, and her translation from the French text of Dora d’Istria (Elena Ghika), Land of the Thunderbolt Mountains, will be published by I. B. Tauris (London). 

 She recently published "Open Roads and Secret Destinations" (her second book in "Bibliotheca Universalis" Collection), translated into Romanian by Monica Manolachi, who is presenting it in Bucharest, at the Open Art bookshop, in April 2016. 

  Morelle Smith has been a honorary contributor of "Contemporary Literary Horizon" since 2012.

Traducere. Translation: Elena Ţăpean

Corespondent special la Marea Neagră. Special correspondent at the Black Sea