Trafika Europe 7 - Ukrainian Prayer

Quiet Flows the Una

Aquatic Catharsis

H ow I loved the rain when it started to lash the water. A raindrop crashes into the surface, which then sends it upwards in a back-jet like a fountain. Thousands of raindrops bounce on the river, each creating a little circle that for a moment looks almost like a water lily. If the rain is heavy and fast, the back-jets seem to join with the river or to spout out of it and shoot off into the sky above the heaped-up clouds. ‘Pouring from above and below,’ Grandmother Emina used to say as she cleared out the ash pan of the stove with her tongs. Rain can beat down with such

rhythm and force, if only for a short time, such that the opposite bank completely disappears before your eyes. And the river is covered by a watery curtain from which it emerges a few minutes after the shower like a milky white mist. The willow’s leaves cannot be seen through the river’s cumuli, but I know that when the mist disperses the greenery will begin to splash in all directions. In my Grandmother’s kitchen the piece of elecampane root on the stove smells of warmth and innocence. The Una takes on a pale-yellow hue that rolls down the river along the bank rich in yellow clay. A calm reigns briefly after the downpour, perhaps

175