Blinding

by Mircea Cărtărescu

I saw the stars scattered over the city. Someone, deep inside another night, of another kind, held my world and followed,

Crows, like black leaves, hopped between trees, shaking snow from the boughs. A melted-gold sun pushed out transparent shadows behind the sleighs and drew thin trees onto the waves of snow, growing from the same roots as the vertical trees, but they stretched longer and seemed to have more branches.

The light shone over the valley. It turned the surrounding cliffs as transparent as gemstones, and, with an ever greater power, it rose in a single column of greatness to the sky, shattering the clouds, moving the stars aside, and revealing the endlessly gentle majesty of the Trinity.

I called you then, in the dream, by your name: ‘Mircea,’ and I knew that, years later, you would hear.”