Blaugustine's Other Blog

GOODBYE MIRCEA, MY FRIEND

Once you told me that the years
You spent in solitary confinement
When the Russians took your country
And put you in prison for your thoughts
Were the happiest of your life. Do I remember
Your words rightly, Mircea my friend?
I remember your laugh most of all.
Was it in the silent darkness that your laugh
Was born? Nobody laughed like you.
Every conversation got the gift
The punctuation, the conclusion
The grown-up version of child's unbroken joy
Raucous lifeloving spring bubbling
Out of harsh desert sand
Filtered through burning rocks
The wisdom of your laughter.
Yesterday I heard that you were gone, my friend.
Oh!

Rest in peace Mircea Marosin, Romanian theatre director, designer, painter, writer, philosopher, linguist. Born in Bucharest 1921, died in Cambridge, UK, June 2007. I met him in the 1980s when he came to the printmaking classes I was teaching at the City Lit in London. He wanted to learn etching in order to produce a limited edition of prints from drawings he had done based on Ovid's Metamorphoses. He was too impatient to become an etcher and didn't like all the cleaning up involved but we became firm friends. I can hear him laughing now