Old Cottage (II)
draft MT — needs author review
Five in the morning, I didn’t know it yet
I woke up, music still playing in memory
Thoughts still spinning as if they hadn’t gone to sleep
I dressed my body in the morning’s finest clothes
Bare feet tasted the morning dew
Only the first steps were clumsily unsteady
Sated with the scent of prose I fell among cornflowers
Poppies, chamomile, and grasses reigning over all
And there, not far from the tracks, the stationmaster
Knows well when the next line of freight cars will come
Where new houses stand and cars instead of orchards,
There, lost among the thickets, the world fell asleep
An old homestead, no longer remembers who once cared for it
Some shed with its doors torn out, some pot and jug
And an ancient outhouse, its two sides bent askew
An old cottage, a crumbling chimney bracing a poor roof
How many people, how many animals lived out their years there
How many holidays, how many prayers: that God grant health
How many partings and returns, how many letters and visits,
How many deaths and births, where are those children now
And when, before it, in the painting, I try to recreate that time
When the wind brushes the face with drops of rain
I hear whispers that along the tracks a train rushes to Zwierzyniec
And already roars in the chimney, to warm the guests at dinner.
For the painting “Old Cottage” in Zwierzyniec — oil on canvas, diptych 144×100 cm. Plein-air, 2014.