Pregled posta

Somewhere in Romania (on my way to Sibiu)

(excerpts from a travelogue)


Nighttime, about 2 a.m.
alone in a coupe
I stood up and opened
the window
to let in some fresh air
… full moon
…the wide plain
… endless fields of corn and oilseed rape
I breathe in — breathe out…

In America,
young Knut Hamsun
is on his way back home,
after
a doctor tells him
he has only
two months
left
due to
active consumption
of the lungs.
He is returning
to die in his
motherland.
With no money,
he crosses America,
riding the rails atop boxcars,
wanting to reach Seattle —
or Cisco,
shivering, instinctively
breathing deeply in
— and out.

Suddenly,
some twenty kilometers
from the train,
I notice a small yellow light
in the window
of a lonely, white, traditional house.
I detach myself from the window
and fly there.
A man sits on a chair,
smoking a pipe.
"I should take a trip
somewhere —
Venice, perhaps.
I have never been there.
Venice is one of those places
almost everyone
has on their checklist,
something you must see.
Like Rome. Yes.
All roads lead
to Rome.
Our ancestors
came from Italy,
didn't they
Livius?"
He speaks
to his grandfather's
ghost.
"Surely they did,"
the dead man
replies.

I fly back
to my seat.

Knut Hamsun
finally reaches the port of Cisco
and boards a ship.
The ship departs, and after several days at sea,
Knut steps onto the Norwegian coast,
miraculously healed.
"I deeply believe
that the time I spent
on the roof of the train
saved my life,"
Knut would say
later.
Wim Hof —
before Wim Hof

"The train lets out a sound
for no reason,
as if it wants to say hello
to the man
in the white
house."