Don’t Pull the String

I believed it would be summer forever
until forbidden trees from heaven shook off their fruit
a season for those with the heart somewhere in their neck
yet a too low heart
for the offspring of a cornucopia era
until it started to fall apples pears apricots peaches all of them made of soft wax
with the wick inside like a twisted worm
they popped them on their heads but no one lit them
women with very long nails and glossy lips did not bite
did not thrust their fingers into them

no one received any light
people were baptized to believe that wonders don’t exist
they were all as if dripped over with wax/ they were blind
only a child kept an apple in the palm of his hand

cinema curtains were golden
they looked like an archangel’s wings
outside it was snowing there were fluffy stories
and caramel apples on display shelves
the old confectionery chef was dead

first snowfall

as if I hid my hands
with gnarled fingers
under my grandma’s mohair shawl
the same winter after winter on her shoulders

and my finger bones don’t stay wise
like cuckoo offspring in a deserted nest
they tremble starving
to pick again that rose so perfidiously red
climbing the house pillar

I order them to stay straight
as far as for me there is a cross
or a point
and then another line

Blazing White

It was snowing too insistently,
snowflakes almost as big as the eye,
over nostrils, over half-open lips,
over the white lace shawl from my grandmother,
exactly when I was not supposed to wear it.
I had the profile of a porcelain statue
like a Russian girl proud of her kokoshnik.

After a while I started to breathe now and then,
choked first while crying, then while sighing
and finally while hiccuping.
Maybe because of cold and bewilderment,
or because of the strange story about mulled wine with cinnamon.
How could he possibly hide in my blood then
when I had grown up with bitter cherries and wild sorrel leaves,
when I had sipped the milk foam my whole childhood
without crying on the blanket made of rough sheep wool?

How could that man travel through my heart’s mill stones
without being ground down completely?
Now only tears are sticking over nostrils, over half-open eyelids
like a glue from a sour cherry bark wound.
Not a single barrier, not a single one way sign,
not a single red traffic light
or at least a church with saint relics.

Sledges

Why am I obsessed with sledges, can you tell me?

I tried in vain to understand the whole story. In everyone’s life there are moments that count and significant others leaving their prints in memories, beliefs and feelings.

Maybe you can tell me what a sledge means for you. I can guess that each of you has a special story, a different story about sledges and I am sure that for each of you a sledge has a different meaning. This is my story.

I was raised in a house with a big courtyard and two gardens. The house and the streets nearby were on flat ground. Nonetheless my parents bought me a sled when I was little, a real sled with polished wood and green metallic tracks. This stirred my imagination and my need to ride that sled more often than my relatives were disposed to drag me around our house. I was little and our dog was big, so I tried to make it haul my sled. It was impossible to convince the dog to do that. I found refuge from my disappointment reading Andersen fairy tales about ice lands and children traveling in sledges driven by raindeers far from home.

When I was about twelve years old I went in the countryside one winter, where my grandparents had their house. There the road was sloping right before reaching home and maybe, I say maybe, I was playing with my sled there among other children. My memory is blank about this, blank as snow. I remember only the fact that my grandfather brought out from the old attic an old sled made of wood from head to tails, the sled that once carried my mother. I was so impressed and happy to see it tied with hand made ropes.

Then, one Sunday afternoon, a neighbor came to visit us with his horse driven sledge. It was also entirely made of wood. He was going with his wife to visit another friend of his in another village. And my grandparents let me go with them. That was my only sledge stroll in my whole life. We arrived at the destination and everything was so beautiful along the way. We returned late at night, but the driver was unfortunately drunk. His wife never took the harnesses in her hands before and she couldn’t do that then. She was listening to her husband’s demands. I must admit that I was scared. But in the same time all the road back was so beautiful, billions of stars were shining above and below in the snow. I felt a kind of ecstasy admiring everything in that cold starry night, when…the man began to argue with his wife. She was pestering him to pay more attention to the road. And he got angry. I was in the back seat, with my feet covered in woolen cloth. And he hit her a few times and I believed we were about to fall together in the snow because the road was descending. Yes, I was frightened after all that excitement about snow, stars and gliding so rapidly downwards. And I felt such pity for that woman…Thanks God we arrived home without any other accident.

Some people say that man is caught sometimes between hammer and anvil. Many situations in life are like that and one does not know what to choose…the least of evils like they say. I think that woman was then in such a situation and me the same. And I don’t remember what I did afterwards, did I tell what happened to my grandparents or not? All those blank pages in my memory are like snow where sledges continue to glide. Or life’s and neighbor’s sledgehammers continue to hit and flatten my emotions.

But even though I don’t know for sure why sledges still impress me so, I can say that that trip in the sledge was one of the most magical moments in my life. Maybe because of that I am still happy to listen to children carols about Santa Claus and his sledge. A part of my childhood is there, the best part of it, my dreams, my wishes, my disappointments and my first life lessons.

Winter Scent

I’m sitting on my bed. The terracotta stove begins to warm up. It is the first winter fire in my house. A small black spider jumps into the iron poker. I am leaning on my back, my eyes follow the ceiling crevices. This might have been a heavy rain wound, its seared scars deepen year after year. On the floor a knife hides among apples in a whisker basket. Suddenly I am aware that I lay down between attic and cellar. I feel trapped, cloaked in the apples’ scent, drifting…

cellar stairs –
an autumn apple
falls back