Requiem in a Classical Style
For those who died in Bucharest, December 1989
by Magda Carneci
1.
With a drop of blood, innocent bright liquid,
could a putrid, slumbering sea of marrow be purified?
Could only one body, mine, inscribed crosswise upon you,
cure your sickness, o homeland?
And a thousand bodies, young boys, young girls,
thrown into the starry vault of your mouth, your greedy belly,
your bloated memory, could they satisfy your hunger?
Let me be the solitary seed for a redemptive and young matter,
Let me become the flowering field for an unknown, invincible plant,
Would that we were myriad of unconsumed pyres to light your darkness?
Could a shower of love, a downpour, save a land?
A cataract, a flood, a billowing sea of blood?
Could your corpse be reanimated by a sea of blood?
3.
Should I be the one to defy you, to accuse, to curse,
the first to cast the stone at your face, in reproach and hatred?
Should I be the one to crucify you one more time-
you, so often cut and wounded, stoned, nailed up, disfigured?
Should I set fire to your ever multiplied, ever burning pyre?
to this famished destiny that devours you, should I add a blasphemy,
Never to be satisfied with hunting you, through all eternity?
If I do not burn together with you, then it would be in vain
for the tormented light of your body to illuminate the dark.
If I do not crucify myself with you, mocked and martyred within you,
then your endless sacrifice would be in vain.
If I do not love you, then it is myself I do not love.
Alienated and festering, I would vanish into the corrupt world.
If we do not love each other, who or what could bring this sad land
back from the dead, this blood, these bitter words?
6.
Come once more, vast suffering woman, unconsoled,
follow in the wake of your martyrs, young girls, young boys,
those who have not yet become weary, who have not fallen asleep,
who have not run away, and who will never forget anything.
Come, o homeland, before your dead and your living,
to bathe yourself in the clean dust of their feet,
to purify yourself in their endless suffering.
You will be created anew. In each of us. You will be forgiven once more.
Reborn. A virgin. How many times? Again and again.
Ocean of old marrow, chaotic magma, greedy ravenous mud
spread everywhere, through hamlets and recesses, fields and towns,
You will engulf us, you will again swallow us into you-
luminous tide of blood, loving lava of fire,
your powerful current will wash us into the final delta of our silence:
where out of eternity
new worlds
new worlds
unborn children
and your Ideal Form
dreamed once again
are forged
for all Eternity.
