You, Paunescu, what love inspired your odes
to christen the Palace of the Republic, upon the bones
of what Magyars, Jews, children born out of wedlock
into criminal asylums which cripple their powers
to walk, sing, eat, or even breathe?
Did you, too, steal flatware from the Hotel de Paris
and hunt down boars your leader took for his own kill?
You echoed every speech with Romania, Ceausescu!, every daft
outpouring of bile upon the people you claimed to be one of,
you rose like Speer through the ranks, the artist
the king and queen knelt down to, to supplicate with words.
Here, like Ustinov as fat Nero, fiddling as Rome burns,
trapped, cowering outside some embassy's gates, your pig-eyes
gleaming convict you on sight. If it wasn't for
some young reformed Securitate, you'd be
guttered down in that same concrete patio
as your patrons. A great snow lifts the curfew
off the night--the revolution starts to find itself
in the courage of people to speak what they will.
But what now--what poems can flood from your pen?
Which of your words can be made back into flesh again?

[past] [home] [future]