The Destiny of Those Who Love their Nation – Leonida Lari

Aceste poezii traduse in limba engleza fac parte din volumul „Testament – Anthology of Romanian Verse – Bilingual Edition” (Daniel Ionita, Minerva 2012). Dorim ca prin aceste articole sa promovam frumoasa poezia romaneasca pentru cititorii de limba engleza. Puteti sa dati „Share” acestor articole catre prietenii dvs. de limba engleza. Gasiti mai multe informatii la sfarsitul acestui articol. Va multumim! Daniel Ionita & Intercer

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Well, it is time for Leonida Lari, the remarkable poet and patriot from the Republic of Moldova, with one of her most significant poems, published in Testament…:

THE DESTINY OF THOSE WHO LOVE THEIR NATION
To brother Grigore

The Easter’s here, Grigore, of the meek,
An Easter just as gentle as you are
And in my life, not days but hours I seek
To die, to resurrect, most painful scar.

How beautiful and gentle this spring is
I do regret it, in some corner curled
My life has scattered wildly in a whiz
A stranger’s every poet in this world.

And now we’re strangers, we, who not just once
Romanians from foreigners defended,
But promptly we’re rewarded like some dunce;
In brothers’ curse, despicable we ended.

They howl from some satanic thirst for power,
They cuss us, who for liberty have yearned
And who against machineguns did not cower
But jumped out from exploding cars which burned.

They cursed us Grig, for how the hell we’re found
Pursued in winter or in spring, like game,
We’re not to parties or to interests bound,
But to the country and its godly flame.

Tell me my brother, for my mind does weaken
From all these devilish nets without a rest,
In Chisinau we’re spat on, scoffed and beaten,
And beaten are again in Bucharest.

It’s clear my brother, perfect sense it makes,
These God forsaken traitors stoop so low,
For the same hand is mixed in all the scrapes
In Bucharest, as well as Chisinau.

The same hand writes their lies in the same papers
Anti-Romanians all, an evil tryst,
We’re international, they say, the traitors
And bring into this world the Antichrist.

The Easter of the meek is here, and pure
Respect is paid to dead ones, strangers too,
How beautiful this spring is, how demure
In which among the meek we’d be anew!

We go through parks, streets, markets, in disguise
Becoming like the mob, crumpled and torn,
But when we’ve faced death, seen it with our eyes,
Around us a big empty space would form.

An emptiness, a vacuum for defence,
Began somewhere from the Arhei direction,
A strange rotund, a guise, a mood intense
That seems to save ideas, bring protection.

…Bright Easter candles burn a lonely light
On lonely graves at Dniester’s craggy shore
Where dead lay our country’s best and bright,
Sent without weapons in a bloody war.

We have been sent into this slipshod war,
Mindlessly started without any goal,
The capital was spared the blood and gore,
Which payed on Dniester’s bank a crimson toll.

Brother Grigore, I’m ablaze in pain
My soul’s a-rage in a demented fire,
For while our young were for the country slain,
The tzars, for rum and vodka would retire.

They would laugh loud, some silly joke they’d quack,
And janissaries over them would guard,
When children bones under the tanks would crack,
Their blood, to heaven, groans and cries bombard!

I am repulsed by this old world my brother,
Which even heaven’s circle can’t defend,
For some would fight for freedom; others rather
Will always chose an easy, worthless, trend.

The Easter’s here, Grigore, of the meek,
And death I lack, and life is not my station –
Our lives do not for days, but hours seek
The destiny of those who love their nation.