Romanian Suite
KENNETH RADU
Romanian Suite
Brick Books
CANADIAN CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Radu, Kenneth
Romanian suite
Poems.
ISBN 0-919626-89-0
1. Title.
PS8585A29R66 1996 c811′.54 C96-931512-0
PR9199.3.R33R66 1996
Copyright © Kenneth Radu, 1996.
The support of the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts
Council is gratefully acknowledged.
The cover photograph was taken in Bucharest by Joshua Radu.
Brick Books
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N6K 4G6
Canada
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to my editor Don McKay for his inestimable help in unearthing the true poems, and to my son Joshua whose visit to Romania and pictures of Bucharest were instrumental in the creation of Romanian Suite. As always, my wife Diane has been a source of inexhaustible encouragement and technical assistance.
A few of the poems from the 'Tales from the Crypt' section originally appeared in The Fiddlehead.
For my brothers and sisters,
George, Elaine, Connie, Marie and John:
in time of need, no distance at all.
Contents
I - Tales from the crypt
The Gardener
Romanian Creation Myth
Prince Vlad
Dracula
The Immigrant
Heritage
The Palace
The Immigrant's Wife
The Nurse's Lullaby
The Nurse's Tale
The Resurrection
The Uprising
a white cloud
II - would have been
i: dinu lipatti
ii: I dream of desert places
III - The crazy bride
IV - The Gardener Attends a Piano Recital at Place des Arts
V - Feasting at the table
I
Tales from the Crypt
The Gardener
My grandfather sat outside
under a white moon, dust ringing
his eyes and locust larvae glowing
in the devastated fields.
He played the pipe still,
remembered the old village
and told stories to his new wife
and their children, which passed
like a song from their mouth to mine.
In my garden I plant pumpkins
more for aesthetics than nutrition,
take time from the piano to dig deep
into good mother earth composted
with well-rotted manure, build
evenly-spaced mounds and press
fungus-resistant seeds into the soil
on the day rain falls gently.
Self-satisfied like Adam I
think it good to grow plenitude.
Organically inclined I sit on a stool,
plucking squash bugs out of
the flower's throat with tweezers,
dropping the marauders into a vat
of gasoline; but they have sucked
too much green life from my vines,
are legion and insatiable. Desperate,
I spray a poison shower over
my patch of pumpkins.
Now I sit surrounded by the fruits
of the earth, return to the piano.
My fingers are stiffening on the scales
and music is becoming the dream
of what I would rather have been.
News of Romania: a country I know
only in family echoes, a few good dishes,
the sound of the pipe, a legend or two.
A hungry twisted boy on television,
myself as a child, his eyes darker
than death, beckons and turns,
leading the way to my ancestral crypt.
Romanian Creation Myth
The beginning began with God chatting
on a leisurely wave with the devil,
both wondering wherefore so much ocean
and not a patch of land to stand upon.
Before gardening became a passion
and the devil His perpetual foe,
God's hem brushed the cloven hoof
ankle deep in the first waters.
Like brothers the deities shared
primordial substance, equally matched,