The Boat Travelers - Yesterday

I think the sky is getting ready for rain. Perhaps it already has rained while I was crying.

Probably. Above my palms the air is different colors and, next to the dark clouds, the blue is clear.

The sun is still there, awkward, ready to fall. The lamps have taken root at the roadside.

In the off-balance evening, a bruised bird skews into the air but, in despair, it falls back at my feet.

“I was big and heavy,” it says. “People were afraid of my shadow when it fell on them come the evening. I, too, was afraid when the bombs fell. I flew far away and, once the danger was over, I returned to hover above the corpses.

“I loved death. I loved playing with death. Perched high on the summits of dark mountains, I would close my wings and let myself fall like a stone.

“But I would never see it through to the end.

“I was still afraid. I loved only the death of others.

“My own death I learned to love only later, much later.”

I take the bird in my arms, I stroke it. Its free wings are broken.

“No friend will return, once humiliated,” it says. “Go to the city. There, there is still light. A light which will make your face pale, a light that resembles death. Go where the people are happy, because they don’t know love. They are so replete they have no need of each other, nor of God. At night, they double-lock their doors and wait patiently for life to go by.”

“Yes, I know,” I tell the wounded bird. “Many years ago I got lost in a city. I didn’t know anyone there. So it didn’t matter where I was. I could have been free and happy, because then I loved no one.

“I stopped beside a dark lake. A shadow passed by, stared at me intently. Or was it merely a poem I kept repeating, was it music? I don’t know, I try in vain to remember. I was afraid. I ran away.

“I had a friend. Seven years ago, he killed himself. I can’t forget the warmth of the last days of the summer, nor the hopeless tears of the forests in the rain.”

“But I know some wonderful fields,” says the injured bird. “If you could reach them, you would not know your heart. There are no flowers there, the grass waves like flags, the happy fields are boundless. You will only need to say: I would like to rest, earth of peace.”

“Yes, I know. But a shadow will pass by. A picture, a poem, a tune.”

“Then go to the mountain,” says the bird, “and let me die. I can’t bear your sadness. Sadness of gestures, of waterfalls the color of ashes, sadness of dawn striding across muddy fields.”

On the mountain the musicians have gathered. The conductor has folded in his black wings and the others have started to play.

Their boat sailed on the waves of music, chords floating in the wind.

The hooked fingers of the largest one were pushed into the wood. The other four have taken off their coats, their ribs were stretched, their knees bent, black spiders danced on their veins.

In the valley, the sun still reverberated, simple gray houses grazed on the grass of the meadow when the strongest of the musicians, a dreamer who walked in the cornfields, knelt down on the hill. And in the bottom of the boat sang the one who was the happiest of all.

The others haven’t seen the crutches of the impotent sun. A picture has been filled in with the colors of the sky. In the eyes the stars of the future have come out.

So the men on the boat have lifted their dead on to their shoulders and taken one last glance at the earth.