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
www.brickbooks.ca
Box 20081
431 Boler Road
London, Ontario
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,