The house was a house. It stood at the edge of the fields. Alone.
Flat to the horizon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
______________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a way it was where I was born, or half, though I don\u2019t remember. The first time I saw it was not unlike today, that is: a sky the color of pigeons\u2019 wings and down below the thinnest rim of pink an eye limning the edge the unbroken vast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
_____________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the town was different. Apart from the redone central square a pale amber walls still the dull beige dark and plaster. And a river. Small, but a river. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Were there any trees? There were trees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
______________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The house was a house. Or had been. It stood with another. Both crumpled inwards weeds and vines through what had once been windows. Here and there the dusty red a dislodged brick. It was just past the railway lines. A station that was no station. A couple of abandoned silos. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
That was a different day, or maybe just afternoon. Humid mid-September, hazy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
______________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I have no idea where we were in relation to the river.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
______________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A simple solid table of brown wood. A dish of trout. Beans. Pickled beets. Four figures. The sound of water rushing beyond the windows. The light dim. Four figures in uncertain relation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
______________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The man was looking for the maestro<\/em>, he said. Here? Here. But it\u2019s nothing but a tiny industrial town. That could be, but he\u2019s here. Or was. <\/p>\n\n\n\n ______________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n ______________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n But what kind of schoolroom is this? What kind of faces? Roughhewn pews. ______________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n ______________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n A question sounds: to what have we attended?<\/p>\n\n\n\n ______________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n Out what doors into a winding and then onto a square, different, that is, older At night when you can\u2019t sleep a distant thrum, but not that distant. You ______________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is this abandoned chair? This corner? This square?<\/p>\n\n\n\n ______________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n The narrative. Fermented onions beets a slice of bread the muffled clatter ______________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n Suffering with their regret they cover it up in blame. In flame. In blood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ______________________ In such lives no room for any impulse of one\u2019s own suspended between here and corpse waiting we were & wait & wait<\/p>\n\n\n\n ____________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n What ravaged figure is this? <\/p>\n\n\n\n I alone have escaped to tell you we alone have escaped to tell you<\/em>\u2014what? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Please, tell me, who? ______________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n At night sometimes along the river I think retreating glaciers ice sheets the salt and coal that made us, the limestone of our homes, calcium too in bone, the sea, primeval forest this plain these fields flat to the horizon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ______________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n The oracles of Delphi & Dodona. Linear perspective. Dark mirrors. Chiaroscuro. Rembrandt. Malevich\u2019s Black Circle<\/em>. The lost sands of Dada. ______________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n ______________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lace curtains behind a simple solid table of brown wood it\u2019s dusted with white lace cloth a series of white pharmaceutical boxes along the edge a brownish bottle and beyond the frames the panes it\u2019s snowing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n ______________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2026 how warm she was how pale her skin the nipple how delicate just a breath it was smudge of ash blushed sky\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n ______________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n Broken wheel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n ______________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n But when he said that impatience was the only sin, the root of our eviction, what keeps us from return\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n all our now what\u2019s past. <\/p>\n\n\n\n ______________________ ______________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dark and silent smolder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ______________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another courtyard of muffled song of prayer in the plum-dusted space between afternoon and evening darkening leaves ashiver<\/p>\n\n\n\n A memory mechanism (or was that machines)<\/p>\n\n\n\n ______________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n A glass of beer in this rare glimpse of sun. By the river again. At the edge of the old, which is to say, even older. <\/p>\n\n\n\n ______________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n Every evening before settling across the patchworked roofs the pigeons wing their questions slow, over and over, while the crows steady slowly home ______________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n A simple solid table of brown wood pitted and scarred set with an apple ______________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n ______________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n _____________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n ______________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n The house was a house. It stood at the edge of the fields.<\/p>\n\n\n\n _____________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n A banded shirt, hanging, just there, just behind the counter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The silence is thin; I can\u2019t explain it. ______________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n Misted over. ______________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n The lapsed Jesuit. The blue flower. A sky that won\u2019t clear. A poor figure, almost broken, bent upon a wheel crude weapons of war crude cage rotten books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ______________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n No pulse. No cadence. One long wail of dusk. ______________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hating security & a path free from snares I became to myself a land of want<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n ______________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n ______________________<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The house was a house. It stood at the edge of the fields. Alone.Flat to the horizon. ______________________ In a way it was where I was born, or half, though I don\u2019t remember. The first time I saw it was not unlike today, that is: a sky the color of pigeons\u2019 wings and down below […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":20462,"template":"","categories":[56,10],"class_list":["post-20720","stsp_text","type-stsp_text","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-issue-26-issues","category-prosa"],"yoast_head":"\n
But what comes. The days. How long they seemed. Voided of any seeming end, that is: reason. If full of unquiet love. A city rebuilt. Paused between summer and fall. I remember a cloister, or maybe a monastery. It was pink. The city was not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don\u2019t know what to say all the time all the towns most of them not grey but sepia somehow, the colors of earth, that is: now, in the mind, what I remember, hilltop towns, or close enough, bristled stone blackened with centuries of soot rain and wind the peal of bells, resurrection, day in, day out, the sculptor\u2019s sonnets in my pocket, maps, lines, legends\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n
______________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A crucifix of two-by-fours. A man, staring into the dark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A simple solid table of brown wood notched and scabbed a piece of scrap metal and the wisped silhouettes of ferns as if sunned therein.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
______________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the sheaved fields the unadorned vast on into the invisible, while inside, on a windowsill, bulbs the skins\u2019 brittle paper, branches, black bread, a candle here in the dark sitting here with a prayer the one who never thought, not really,
to pray what\u2019s left when all that\u2019s left\u2019s the brute fact a question sounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
19th-century the buildings cream-colored sun shining, a bus or two, homemade flags, that is, sheets, in other languages, a different kind of escape, if unending, ring road and underpass into a wooded circle passing through shade and on into the old, early autumn just, surprisingly warm, tram scrape and creak the thin strike of hooves on stone a bell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
______________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n
can feel it. Despite the pigeons in the courtyard last night sketching the roof.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don\u2019t even know what I\u2019m looking for. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
______________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n
of silverware, the welcoming ghosts of other meals a thin smell of cabbage maybe out in the hall. A simple solid table of brown wood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The end of the avant-garde.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An upside-down sneaker sticking out of a pile of mud. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A pale tattoo, there, on a shoulder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A series of acrobats suspended mid-stretch into flight
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
it\u2019s something like waves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
chipped blue-and-white pitcher a plate. A sheaf of grain. The light is dim.
The surrounding dark a dark brown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Like the cool. Like mornings beneath the sky yet unstitched by roars\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This, the material, one\u2019s got to make of it what one can. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Where a reserve police battalion crossed a different border. Ordinary men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The humble language of welcome. Thin coffee. Cake. Homemade schnaps. Around a plastic table, outside, hands around an oil cloth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A question sounds. To what have I attended?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
______________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n
______________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She didn\u2019t have any tattoo at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n