This is a poem composed by Valeriu Gafencu during his last years in communist political prisons in Romania. Gafencu, considered by many who encountered him “the saint of prisons,” did not have a pen to write his poems; they survived because his friends memorized them and passed them from one to another. For many, the poems remained a source of normality in the middle of an insane world.
I translated the poem.
A gift
by Valeriu Gafencu
As a gift I send a lily,
Dear brother, from the garden.
It would give your eyes some comfort
With its pure, virginal garment.
Dear white, beloved flower,
How I’d wish that I could go
All embraced by your clean costume
To my Father, white as snow.
Seedling thus would I become,
In the most wonderful garden,
And my life would have as warden
Jesus’ love, from where I come.
In the night I cry all muffled
And I sigh with my faint voice:
Give to me the Wedding garment
With white lilies; I rejoice.
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| A lily as it appears in the drawings of Fr. Arsenie Boca (from his Living Words, published in 2014 by Charisma Publishing House) |
Immigrant on Earth 
Great translation. Reading it, I felt the desperation of incarceration, but also the power of believing.
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Great translation. I felt the power of desperation and also the power of believing.
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