Trafika Europe 6 - Arabesque

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hardship and deprivation. If the ears had contemplated their long journey, and not simply shoved it to the back of their minds along with the rest of the nightmares, they would have experienced the Netherlands as a fish trap, a fyke net, whose long leader was formed by the Rhine. Those German ears that fled west, designating the sunsets the tantalizing answer to their desires, stood namely on the Rhine’s east bank sometime in the spring of 1917 and then followed the sun north. Senseless with terror, lines of these ears crept north along themightywatercourse, fewof them even sparing the time for any disconsolate copulations underway. None of them dared venture beneath the noisy, rumbling iron bridges that intermittently offered the travel-weary escape. The extensive harbors in the larger

cities were a reoccurring nightmare, since the ears were forced to navigate along the stone wharves’ undersides down by the water’s edge in perpetual danger of discovery or drowning. A misfortunate few that lost their grip were fortunate enough to land on driftwood, which overtook their fur ther transpor t. Because of the state of war no-one was surprised by this macabre sight, assuming that the ear in question originated from some enemy plane’s dismembered pilot.

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