Ion Bucur

ION BUCUR

A poet

I was told you are a poet. A poet slowly fading away in a clinic in Rome. But that was years ago, in 1941 or perhaps 1954.  Your portrait, swiftly drawn with brush and ink,  speaks to me out of the past  – and I would surely have fallen in love with you – as you silently challenge me to remember.  In the lower right hand corner I can read the name of the artist – Dragutescu, Romanian like you. He must have loved you for he  kept you company as you were dying,  drawing picture after picture as you were preparing to cross that final threshold.

It took me a while to discover your name, Ion Bucur.  And that there is a book of your poems, La Malunri de Linisti, but it is in Romanian. Google tells me that it means The Shores of Silence. So I can only wonder what your poems were like. 

One can find almost anything on the web. Digiting your name, I find there was a documentary, La mort  du jeune poète, dated 1974, but time and cyberspace  seem to have swallowed it up.

So what remains is your haunting portrait, gazing into some unknown tomorrow, perhaps more tantalizing than if I could really have caressed the hollow of  your cheek, lightly brushed back that wayward lock of hair.

And now, as I sit at my desk in the year 2021, it is you, your spirit Ion Bucur, who keep me company.