Dan Desliu - The Perfect Time To Die Poem by Paul Abucean

It was a time of agony
a time one thinks could never be
Yet some, with undiminished zeal
in foolish stubbornness persisted
or maybe thinking they were real
they made believe they still existed

A time no calendar could seize
with barren buds and rhymes aplenty
its pathologically splendid
parade swayed over slime and sleaze
as dirges rang and hearses rolled
and wilted fragrances took hold

Prophetically neath the clouds
more crows than cranes raved high and loud
Throughout the nether air as through
translucent glass one felt the slither
of the vast caterpillar who
its senseless self heaved hither, thither

Its blinded billows to and fro
in drowning silence went on churning
at once departing and returning
a primal craving urged them so
Onto the ice of hollow glass
long rows awaiting hence to pass

against the odds found ways to cheer
the part of them that was still here
they plodded crumbling halls, not streets
and when at dusk their toil was ended
they sank between their shabby sheets
in frigid pits with darkness blended

Into those caverns did they creep
not asking if the dawn would hail them
or Death himself had come to nail them
They just collapsed. And in their sleep
on horrid lanes they trudged away
toward a glamorous display

It seemed so vain to wonder why
to bring back mem'ries with a sigh
to dream, to hope... for none believed
that things had been some other fashion
none fathomed nor indeed conceived
a future spring of Life and passion


And kids were born mature and spent
and lovers rushed to hate each other
One-wingèd cherubs, maimed and tattered
queued up for weeks and weeks on end
some raven down that they may buy

It was the perfect time to die

(01.1989)
(Translated by Paul Abucean)