Too Late In Paris

by Adrian Păunescu

When i traveled to Paris was late, and too old,
didn't have either luck, either call, either guts,
where i am, i wake up full of wish to take hold
and with painful legs stick myself to the grounds.

Not for me, not a bit of the post modern Hades
me in caves, just right now, i would only find room,
on a stone in a river i wish to set bed,
any travel to Paris seems now a no-won.

Are three quarters in ground those of my generation,
what to do me right here without any of them,
gloriously disabled, near you i should hasten,
and absurdly is calling the madness on drums.

When i traveled to Paris was late and too old
memory has been cleaned, there's a void in it
had been better to taste it when it was forbidden
but today i can't raise from the place where i sit.

And i miss of Brâncuşi, most of all, of Brâncuşi,
if i wasn't too late, just because of a bet,
could have roamed by his windows, or slept at his doors,
for his work could have been just a rock.

I was sentenced to be just Romanian, always,
so good night to the city of eternal light,
when i traveled to Paris was late and too old,
let's go home there's no reason to linger in sight,
too expensive for me to die here on the site.

Prayer For Parents

by Adrian Păunescu

Enigmatically quiet
Simply finishing their intents
Next to us they fall and die
Our beloved; our parents.
Call them Lord, just call them there
From their life long misery
Make them young as they once were
Make them younger than we are.

Just for them, for those who made us
Do a miracle or something
Maybe just delay them thus
Maybe they could start again
Cause they just paid with their lives
All the errors of their sons
God please make them live for always
Our beloved dying parents.

Look at them how they just went
Look at them how they're just gone
Candles in a cuckoos' nest
How they're mute and how they snow.
Full of illnesses and pain
We are getting back to earth
As we still are, as they still are,
Comfort them and help your parents.

The ground's getting heavier
Separation even more
I will kiss your hand my dad!
I will kiss your hand my mom!
Why you looking down at us
Our daughter and our son
I am me that's following
I am going too my love.

I would kiss your hand my dad!
I would kiss your hand my mom!
Say farewell to you my son!
Say farewell to you my girl!
You're my father, you're my son,
You're my mother, you're my girl!

Impossible Wedding

by Adrian Păunescu

Confidants, my mountains entered in the fog
Old bells made of bronze ring on abbey's roofs
When it smells like winter all the weddings froze
For us lunatics, impossible grooms.

Winds and beasts together come at you to pray
Blizzard over me fallen like a noose
I would make your wedding with a town of sleighs
Driven among lanterns with the starry horses.

Dress in white, my bride, beautifully shine
This is how it should for the play i play
Later each of us will be going home
Closed among the hills mystery will stay.

'Till all this will happen you'll be growing gray
All for me will come in the later day
It will be some wedding, we should have no fear
You'll take care of me, i will love you, dear.

Here i brought your bride, mountains closed with night
Weddings of the beasts happen in the mountains
Forests made of scents, wood that's made of sighs
Are the dancing hall of the future wedding.

Candles of the wedding in their paws the bears
Wolves are blowing in (the) fire of the sheepfold
In the rolling down we're unite by birth
You won't be my bride, i won't be your husband.

I invite you all to the wedding blue
Where the bells are pulling silver out of blue
Is too bad, for this isn't our wedding
Is too bad, to death i've been given husband.

47 Eagle Crest, Lake Oswego

I Am Radical

by Adrian Păunescu - Aug, 1, 1988

I am radical
more precisely
i am for keeping
of a right balance
between lie and truth,
between heroes and heroes
between plus and minus,
i am radical,
more precisely,
i am getting sick of the socialist demagogy
more than
of the bourgeois demagogy
because i feel it
pressing from much closer.

I am radical,
i think it is not good, the law
that punishes you more severely
if you kill a bear
than if you kill a man,
and even more,
punishes you more severely
if you speak,
if you have opinions,
than if you kill.

I am radical,
that is i imagine
if the equation
"the people have chosen us
we speak in the name of the people,
we govern in the name of the people,
we build the socialism
with the people and for the people,"
is true,
it is not right
to destroy of the man
his house, his town or village,
without asking the man;
ten students have declared at school,
when the teacher asked them
what good deeds have they done,

in that day,
they helped an old woman
cross the street
but why so many,
the teacher wondered
because the old woman
didn't want to cross the street
they answered.

About this would be the situation
i am radical
and i look in the face,
if the old woman doesn't want to cross the street
it is difficult
to sell yourself
best among others
because you force her to cross,
and things are just like this
the old woman doesn't want
to cross the street.
the old woman is not on the street,
there isn't even a street,
and the old woman isn't even old
but just a nervous country
that would have to cross.

I am radical,
that is i am terrified
by the remorses
that can not save anything anymore
especially the life
that stubborns anyway
for the past few generations
to go to hell.

I am radical
i like prunes, peaches,
summer apples, freedom,
the woman, the historical frontiers,
and incense flavored grapes.

I am radical,
i could dictate a poem
even from a public phone,
but i am radical also
if i mention that
i could do this
only if the one
to whom i dictate
would have a phone.

I am radical,
i believe that Marshall Ion Antonescu
if he would be re-judged
by an impartial tribunal
would be declared
without hesitation,
hero post mortem of Romania
and universal martyr
at least after the reading
of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact.

I am radical,
i believe in the value of cabbage leaf
applied in painful areas
of the body.

I am radical
i don't believe it exists
a more ugly angel
and a more beautiful demon
than man
and, even more that that,
i don't believe it exists
a more fruitful accident
and a more contradictory law
than man.

From myself
and from the others
i extract the square root
and i realize it is only water,
water in a state of thought,
water with soul and whirls,
water, in an incurable
chemical formula.

I am radical,
when it rains
and when it snows
and when they talk about me,
about the water that i am,
about the water that i am.

click me!