Mysterious crime in the Bustenari parish.

The authorities are conducting an investigation.

to Miss Mimy C.

Ion Anton Bosilca, twenty one only
with derrick-mechanic ambitions, grease-boy just now
having thick lips, muscles forged in steel
and a few sisters, one somewhat pretty, another somewhat
not,
but each with a soul rotten like apples fallen from the tree
and another one cross-eyed,

Ion Anton Bosilca, Sunday, 9th of June, current year,
when the village hora ended
how is it he took off for the woods by himself
and never came back again

Sunday night full of scares
And one gunshot

They didn't find him till three days later, in an oil-derrick
his head vanished into the black, his legs shooting out like
hopelessness
that the sisters had to make him out from the shoes, yellow,
with sharp -
pointed toes
Their shrieks were knives stabbing the air
and I saw them tumble down from the top of the hill like big
rocks.
Yes, dear miss, they came a-tumbling down
His sisters did

His sisters
nobody gave them a hand
they were squirming like worms on the ground
and the people were saying the sisters with their
innumerable men
killed him so he never found out about them doing it
who when he returned from working down at the derrick
had to get the food ready and feed the chickens too
what with the sisters busy with the guests and all
whom they slept with all at once by the bunch in their single
room
in the broken down home at the edge of the forest

ion anton bosilca he made some virgin with child
nobody spoke about the murdered boy's transgression
when who knows the father of the big-belly virgin
waited for him with a gun in the woods
and.

But they never found out who did what
not even when towards the end of the week
the authorities show up kind of drunk
(so many hills to bustenari, so many taverns)
and they dragged him out, spreading his black and rotted
body
ripping it open with knives, his skull with a saw
(the doctor the brains quivered in his palms like glass beads)
and found fourteen holes and where they nestled
the fourteen pellets
next to the liver

Then they sowed him back together
and gave him to the sisters and said put him in the coffin.
and the girls cried we got no coffin, we got no money to
make him one.

That night, Veta, the prettiest
who knows will stalk some drill-man
with a wife far up in some mountain village
and dragging him into the shadow of the crude reservoir
glueing herself soft against his thighs
will whisper to him
my love is equal to the price of a coffin

During one of my nights I made love with a servant girl
It was unexpected - and almost against my will
It was somewhere in a dirty provincial town
And I was staying at my childhood friend's.

One evening I was strolling the streets - and when I got back
The servant girl was making the bed in my room
She was a young servant girl and darkish
She said everyone had left, gone to town for a stroll

She smiled
and walked in front of me innumerable times

I was coming apart that evening and had no taste for making
love
But the servant girl was young
Don't think she was older than sixteen
And since she sat herself near the bed, like she was waiting
I stepped up, smiled, and asked her what her name was.

She told me some name, Maria I seem to recall
I told her it's a beautiful name, and she mimicked shame,
I think it was just before midnight
Through the open windows a jumbled murmur broke in from
the city
Somewhere, there, were ballets, movie-theaters, splendid
women and
automobiles
Here, it was just me and this servant girl
She didn't say a thing, just closed her eyes.

She was a short servant girl, dumpy almost
And she reeked of sweat real bad
O, servant girl whom I made love to in a dirty provincial town
When I was coming apart and your masters were gone
Servant girl whom I've never seen since
Servant girl, on your thighs two red stripes from the garters
Servant girl with your belly stinking of onions and parsley
Servant girl with your sex like an eggplant dish
I'm writing this poem about you
So the bourgeois girls will go hysterical
and to scorn their upright parents
Because even though I slept with them innumerable times
I don't wish to sing them
And I piss on their powder cases
On their lingerie
On their piano
And all the other accessories which constitute their beauty.

GEO BOGZA, born in 1908 in Ploesti, petroleum center of Romania. Active member of the Romanian avantgarde in the twenties and thirties. Arrested for his "Poem Invective" book, on charges of usurping morality. Travels to Spain in 1937 as war correspondent. After the war becomes correspondent and then academician and state poet. It is the younger Bogza we love.