183 292
185
Quiet Flows the Una
hurries home, as if home was
a sanatorium where they’d be
safe from the hysterics of the
climatic behemoth. Winter
is even more disconsolate
because othermonsters reign,
formless and impalpable.
There’s no sun then, and no
rain or summer storms, only
shadows gliding through the
town, the souls of the dead
and souls of the living mingled
in disorder and driven by
the same restlessness; that
feign anxiety spread by
subterranean waters. Winter
is a stateof limbo,whoseevery
cell is made of depression.
Those endless twilights that
begin as early as half past four
in the afternoon and have a
pale and weak sun, unable
to warm the sullen face that
watches the outside world
through a window. Those
nights, devoid of all magic
because the minutes and
hours are hammered into the
heads of your dwellers like
heavy-duty nails, puncturing
their memory with its pining
reminiscences of that other
life – a former, old, better,
more beautiful life where
we were all young, strong
and unburdened by others’
death, memories continued in
peacetime even when the war
had ceased. Death is the only
continuity that hasn’t been
disrupted. Such thoughts
work their way along people’s
mental pathways in the nights
as boring and eternal as the
panting of the undertaker’s
assistant digging fresh new
graves at the town cemetery.
Once you were different. They
usedtocall youLittleParis. You
were full of greenery, shops,