Trafika Europe 11 - Swiss Delights

Klaus Merz

ON THE PAINTED STOVE

Toward morning, I rose from the tiled stove that had slowly grown cold beneath me

and sat face-to-face with Art: Days earlier, I had fired up, counted the painted tiles and after Anna had gone, spied where Bartli kept the cider. How we remedied our diarrhea with religion. Why the fox lay next to the dead hunter. How many raw eggs we slipped the madwoman until she came to her senses, and why no one listened and looked back when Robert called for his Marie— the groundwater sank, the horses bolted, the harvest failed— when that love nest blossomed in January.

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