Topic Three - Reading Five

Poems by Ana Blandiana

ALL

. . . leaves, words, tears,

canned goods, cats,

occasionally trams, lines for flour,

weevils, empty bottles, speeches,

prolonged fantasies on television,

red beetles, gas,

pennants, the European Championship Cup,

buses with gas cylinders, portraits of famous people,

apples refused for export,

newspapers, sentences.

 

mixed oil, carnations, welcomes at the airport,

cico-cola, breadsticks, Bucharest salami, dietetic yoghourt,

gypsies with Kents, eggs from Crevedia,

rumours,

Saturday serials, coffee substitutes,

the fight of the people for peace, choruses,

production by the hectare,

Gerovital, the boys on Victory Street,

The Song of Romania, tennis shoes,

Bulgarian compote, jokes, ocean fish,

All.

In a verse published in the same collection in 1984, Ana Blandiana went further, however, and implied that it was the disposition of the Romanian people which rendered them in some way uniquely incapable of resisting tyranny:

THE CHILDREN'S CRUSADE

An entire people no yet on earth

Condemned to march along from

birth

Foetuses from left to right

Devoid of hearing and of sight,

Foetuses on every hand

Who cannot even understand.

All march towards the tomb

Torn from some suffering mother's

womb

Condemned to bear, condemned to

die,

And not allowed to question why.

A VEGETABLE PEOPLE

I think we are a vegetable people,

Whoever saw

A tree in revolt?

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