The Bukovina Frescoes

Thirty-six battles King Stephen the Great

Fought against the Ottoman Empire,

Winning all but two,

And after each victory he built churches

Among the wooded vales.

His bastard son Petru Rares, ruling after him,

Commissioned artists to fresco their walls,

Small Gothic churches in brilliant colours,

Covered all over with paintings

To catechize the illiterate.

Teams of four or five-

Men whose names are now forgotten-

Would even out the rough stone walls

With mortar,then smooth on a fine layer

Of lime plaster mixed with straw,

And then they had just a few hours

To paint with quick sure hands,as one ,

Before the plaster dried out.

So they laid on pigments mixed

From rare clays,semiprecious stones

And minerals, that soaked in and fixed.

In the Last Judgment,heaven-homing souls

Wear embroidered Bukovinian cloths;

Announcing angels sound shepherd's horns;

And King David plays a cobza,

Calm, beatific figures are being burned alive,

Dragged behind horses,

Thrown over castle walls,

Strangled, boiled and beheaded.

By tormentors dressed as Turks.