Trafika Europe 7 - Ukrainian Prayer

Maria Matios

to the authorities this though minor, really strictly prohibited, violation. …Mykhailo sits on the dam here and thinks that, in fact, he had lied to Lieutenant Lupul when he said he didn’t have any interest in the formerly Polish, and just recently, Soviet riverbank. To tell the entire truth, he had no active interest, but Mykhailo does have eyes, and his eyes, thank God, for the time being are good, and he sees everything. He sees that from this last fall that side grewso quiet, as though there were daily funeral repasts for the recently departed. Or, it was as though people there suddenly gorged themselves on poppy stalks and fell into a sleep for a long time, like the forest uncle bears. Something’s not right there… oy, not right, different from

what it used to be before. Say what you will, under Poland it was different. It used to happen that human shouting, shameless girls’ squeaks or satisfied young guys’ whistles echoed from the cliff on that side to the one on this side, and especially on the days of church holidays or village triumphs. And the daytime or evening echo doubled the mixed voices, and they stood like a solitary pure bell, in the valley cut by the water between the mountains. And whoever didn’t know would not have said or even thought that the river, sinuous like a reptile, and green like feather grass, artificially marked with striped poles, makes that bell crack in half. One day last winter when that side was still under the Poles, Mykhailo and Matronka

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