Scenes of a Revolution
there’s a lot of blood and tea
in this night of Cairo
cups of hope
cups of death
in Tahrir Square
death has no hands
it just
lingers like a snake
but nobody fears about it
this snake can’t swallow
people’s feelings
their bodies
all of them
pieces of a flying carpet
to magic liberty
midnight will come soon
planted with bullets
and tear gas: the ugly breed
of monstrous sphinxes
but everybody will sing
and sip the blood of freedom
Poems from the book – Poeme si note informative despre eroi si morminte (2014)
The Peasant
I, Gores Ion, a 68-year-old
from a village in Romania
I fell asleep many times
in the interrogation room.
Major Stamate woke me up
three times
with hefty buckets of icy water
Eight hours later, comrade Captain Neghea
started his shift
and brought me back to life
with five buckets.
At dawn, they woke me up all over again
it was Holy Water they threw on me
as Easter was coming
When I opened my eyes
The spring was singing
And I started ploughing
My forefathers’ land.
The Student
Alexandra, stop mourning me
In this wasted cemetery.
Imagine the spring will return and
There will be flowers and sun
All over the country.
I am not even here.
From prison’s bars and wounds I wove
A stair to sky. I climbed up and found
A new life.
I know there is no justice on Earth
But love, yes, there is.
The Mother
Where is my son? Where is he?
The elections have ended
two governments changed
and five years have passed
since that cursed night of December the 5th 1948 when
like demons they came
in their car, dark as hell
and took him
to their secret headquarters
to confess
after searching the house
throwing away all the books
and finding nothing
I looked for him at the offices in town
A week I spent at the entrance of Jilava prison
And at Ana Pauker’s Ministry I attended an audience
Cursed be her with the pain of all mothers!
Honest I was all my life and
My boy – innocent
I struggled to raise him
Teaching him about good and truth
I, Mary, a widow and the village school teacher.
Where is he?
The Writer
I am free again and back home
in my new motherland
The Socialist Republic of Romania.
I forgot the torture
and long years spent in prison.
I forgave one and all.
Now I have paper, a table
and a wood-burning stove.
But every time I sit down to write,
a terrible shadow looms above me
as if someone is leaning
over my shoulder.
The Priest
I was a regular countryside priest
Sent to an extermination camp
Jesus was crowned with thorns
I was forced to graze them
Costache
Here, in cellar number four
Second level
Jilava Prison 13
On your right
On the upper bed
Costache Oprişan ate
Heaven’s fruits.
The life prison convicted
years are falling
on the prayers
carpet
like peanuts
when fall
comes.
The Robot
I am the robot nicknamed Tanu
my name was Alexandru Popa before.
I was writing poems
and I wanted to be a solicitor.
They hammered me to death
And turned my brain inside out.
I confessed everything and even more
All the thoughts I ever had
All the dreams I always dreamt.
I am the New Man now,
The one successfully retrained
In the Pitesti prison.
I reeducated all the inmates
in Gherla prison chamber 99.
I am a robot
of superior quality.
They are going to ask me
to retrain the whole nation.
The Danube-Black Sea Great Channel
So grandious, so beautiful
And blue is going to be the Channel!
Like a shinny bone
In the sand of Dobrogea!
Such a good cabbage will rise
Greeny and sweety on its edges!
It just needs to finish our duty:
12 hours per day to hammer or to dig
And next year the channel is ready.
And there will be a lot of tasty fish
Playing over our graves!
The Pullover
Nobody remembers who owned the pullover
Who brought it to the Tirgu Ocna prison
If it was woven by and old woman from the Carpathian Mountains
for her husband or son
The owner probably died and someone else took it
On a cold winter night and confessed to the other
Tuberculosis sufferers that it cured him
And gave it to another sick prisoner.
Maxim wore it until December
And on Christmas it was warming the lungs
of old general Comarnu.
Professor Ilias kept it until summer when
Confidently, he passed it to
Pastor Wurmbrant , brought alive, only just,
From a hole of Jilava prison.
They struggled to dress him
His broken ribs were healing for the fourth time.
The pullover covered him like a shroud.
After the miracle, when they sent him to Bărăgan,
He bestowed it to a skinny student who was released wearing it
on August the 1st, 1964.
The rules
(of Pitești prison)
You are not allowed to talk
Read or write
Sing or see the earth
Pray
Or help.
Dr. Josef Ludescher’s motto
(Head of Sighet prison)
The pills and medicine are useless. You don’t need.
You need to let nature handle your disease.
Georgescu
I dealt with many information
Working on secret service.
That was till KGB kidnapped me
At shoot on Bucharest Ploiesti road.
Till then there is only one big secret
My grave location.
Poarta Alba extermination camp
We have three rights here:
to wait in the row
to sit down
to gulp the food.
And some of us – a secret dream:
to return home.
Poems by Florin Dan Prodan
Translations by Simona Nastac and author (7, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14).
SULFUR 