In 1958 he was sentenced to death by the Communist authorities because of his poem, considered subversive by the regime, "Ridică-te Gheorghe, ridică-te Ioane!" ("Rise up now Gheorghe, rise up now Ion!"). The poem asked for peasants and Romanians at large, given generic names, to rise against the communist dictatorial regime: it had been issued as the last wave of brutal collectivization was taking hold of rural Romania (a process which lasted between 1949–1962). It is primarily a poem pleading for freedom. Romanians, generically named George and John, are called upon to arise "not for a heaped shovel of ruddy hot bread, nor barns full of grain, nor for fields full of corn / instead for your heavens to be free of dread..."; for their "song, nailed on a cross" and "tfor the ears of your sun, imprisoned... enchained"; for "a heap of horizons and a hatful of stars", but following is the whole poem, in the translation of Daniel Ioniță: