Trafika Europe 7 - Ukrainian Prayer

Faruk Šehić

‘just like that’? Who would vacuum away our family history and make me think of the past as a gathering of amiable ghosts? Would I be allowed to blame anyone, and whom would I accuse? But, as I’ve said: 1992 was far away. There was no need for these questions from the near future because we were still in a holistic past, in the middle of the happy 1980s. Dwarf corn grew in the sandy fields in the summers. Its sharpedged leaves cut droplets of blood and the stalk would shake when it was showered with rain, which washed the sand from its knobbly roots. Tangles of tough veins sent minerals and water to nourish its living green. Armoured mole crickets dug their tunnels between the stalks,making the

soil loose and porous. Anglers caught them and crammed them into fogged-up jars because they were a supreme delicacy for big chubs. Thecloudburstendedabruptly, creating rainbow arcs in the rain-washed blue. The air had a savoury bitterness from the respiration of the plants. I watched them grow before my eyes. The first swathe of mowed grass smelt of lust: the aroma of orgasm and the vampire kiss of decay. And so I matured, hot and cold, together with the plants, and in my thoughts I wrote these lines: The river is besieged by rain An astonished mariner sinks beneath the tufa The spirit of a mole-cricket whispers in his ear: Melancholy is what defines us.

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