Manifesto for Earth's Health - Adrian Păunescu

 

 

Manifesto for Earth's Health - Adrian Păunescu

We have almost come to be proud
That, faster, in this age we are dying,
That we are getting sick and suffering
From the disease of diseases without escape.

Foolish actors of the tragic role,
And yet we have the inhuman power
To speak of this wound
That will leave the earth barren and empty.

We are the sons of the sick age,
We are the cancerous elite.
We heal ourselves with no more dust,
Poor Jovi on a forsaken planet.

And we also have the strange habit
Of saying, and beating our breasts,
That death has made us her fortune
By selling our estranged health.

And even now, as I write these,
When I speak to you weeping to each,
For a man under heaven it is too late...
One man, at least, irreversibly dies.

Politicians still sane,
Powerful men placed at the helm,
Behold this cancerous earth!
Look behind yourselves!

Lest you, too, are lurking
And the end is not far off,
Lest he put you in the way, to stir them up
A threshing floor of ashes, mother death.

And if you are persuaded that it is real,
That man is stalked by death,
That the god of the world falls from his horse,
Pierced as by celestial leukemias,

If one's wife lies under
The power of great disease, as in a cage,
If there is cancer in the world's body
And in her nerves the smell of gunpowder,

Why do you fight with firearms
And have brought death to perfection?
Why don't you put your money together
To find out good cures?


That it's not so much some doctor's
 gain to annoy us,
But the money spent on death and cold
To put mankind in brackets.


Don't count the illustrious surgeon
The money taken for serious operations
If you don't know the money that flows
To destroy races, nations, nations!

My aunt saves
On gas, electricity and, often, on meat,
Without realizing and knowing
That mankind puts horns behind his back.

In vain are the great poor called
To faithfully tighten their belts,
When you toss their sweat and hundreds of years
Needlessly.

Our parents die of cancer, and our
Children and brothers, and acquaintances, and relatives,
Nothing can postpone the hour of their death,
Heaven's ear hears them no more.

We deserve to live.
Give our money for health,
That today we have come to be proud
Of our disease, first of all.

We want life for those we gave birth to.
We want life for us who are alive,
That death itself in us works mute
Now when we talk of life.

We want to live! We can even give spice
For at least a year's health.
Cease, we beseech you, this trade
Of death and all that cannot be.

Politicians, our good brethren,
We have yielded you ranks and proportions.
But we cannot go on.
Stop this contest of death!

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)