Gadom? Can't find it on the map, it doesn't appear on the road-signs, and our taciturn driver is giving nothing away. Yet here we are, gathered in a soft dusk, exchanging welcomes exuberant and shy, familiar faces, forgotten names, fellow retreatants, a babble of tongues.
life at the end of his chain
very inviting
***
deepening to black
full moon
It finds us singly and in animated groups, pensive, lost in argument, tangled in discussion, gathering hurriedly or with mindful tread. In or out it finds us, threatening, inviting. It is time.
faithfully strikes
the striker
Enter.
***
Can a week have passed - where did it go? Down to the village, perhaps it's there. Spring a little later here, on the level fields a haze of green, daffodils have not yet flowered.
Apartments from the soviet era squat beside crumbling brick barns, greying timber houses.
Implements in yards, little and large, things, each eloquent in its own, the broken and the useful, in rain and sunlight, idleness and labour, just as they are. Black soil of vegetable plots, turned and ready.
now into ginger fur
licks warm sun
One shop. The till-keeper's minder enunciates on our behalf. Marl-bo-ro. A few villagers pass, skilled in the art of ignoring. One grizzled brave stops and would speak. Our dzien dobray doesn't get us far, and he has less of ours. Yet across the gap of language something arcs. Well met, strangers. Port traffic roars unstoppably past.
cobbles under tarmac
it too goes nowhere
***
Between sittings, hens. Every breed and seed of them, picking and pecking, clucking, erupting in clacking consternation, settling again. The crook-backed minder, he too clucks as he moves among them, scattering feed, giving and taking comfort. Keeper of secrets, he has outlived all.
Amassed in the barn, artlessly heaped, back-light by a high window, golden wonders.
***
Where are we? High ground to the north, rolling woodland and rough pasture, sandy swell of an ancient sea,curious horses. Reed-fringed ponds, cry of duck, deer and fox in the shadows, rumours of wild boar.
And who? Polens: people of the fields. Poland, a country that ceased to exist, yet here it is. Call me by my real name. Szcechin/Stettin. Contested identities, occupation, dispossession, disappearance, turn and turn about.
Stumble on the railway line, its dead-straightness a swathe of silence through birch and birdsong. Iron road of hope and fear. What dark-age traffic did it carry to camp or front, escape and exile? In every field a watch-tower.
shell-casings fall
from leaf-bursts
***
Pristine dawn. The guard-dog off his chain ambles in eden, nose wet with dew. Gallus in his apothecary's hat gathers simples - can I say it like that - for his morning brew: Stinging nettle and the bitter herb that heals.
bent over a whet-stone
treats his knives
After the feast, famine. Upwelling of wretchedness this morning. Will it ever? Ghosts in sunlight, shadows crystal cut. Look, when looking away brings greater pain. Breathe out. Dissolve.
lends an air of wistfulness
to the stark shrine
***
Parting is in the air. And a story told.
in the telling
we all
Fish breaks the surface of the willow pond. Dragonflies have hatched. A heron stands unmoved amid reflections.
its buckled planks invite
light feet
