The drowning ship 1994

Who thought the world to be just a big whirlpool?
Far away from the centre of the town, there exists
a man calling streets great old trees tumbling down.

What follows is a story made out of wood, but not only.
This material can be found in every household store,
where things are sold like ready-made shelves,
or built-in kitchens and even doors.

Wood gives mankind a good feeling once work has been done.

Polishing wood till blank for a sailing ship is like a song.

Wood made available envisions trees crushing down: timber!

Men are not distracted by house wives when they test the wood.
They run with the finger over the wood to see if it is smooth like her skin.
After such an experience men enter marriage which like the moon light
skids across the floor to line up with the wooden door. What does that mean?

It seems no one speaks anymore, nor has anyone ever conversed
with the door as to why windows should remain closed to the winds?

To hear resounding footsteps in the sleep is like waves after waves
washing ashore drift wood, while the wind tidies up the tiny space behind the house,
there where grandmother used to live in a garden shed.
The old oak tree still remembers her in the rocking chair
now swayed only by the wind since she is gone, and with her
the big hat and wrinkled face along with a friendly laughter.
Amazing were her eyes, for they could fix at any time in a simple gaze
that stretch of loneliness Marquez described years ago
until death entered with the soldiers the village of eternal time.
Once that happened, grandma waited for her grandchildren to come running
through the garden on a Sunday, before she wrote her last letter.

All of this is to say memories dance like butterflies through the air,
and somewhere along the shore a trumpet would resound
to greet the morning sun, or on the other side of the river
a lazy dog would bark occasionally at the milkman
clattering from cottage to cottage located between birch trees.
These sounds of life are like children mumbling to themselves
when they would memorise sentences for dictation,
while fathers think about Prometheus who brought writing
so that man can go down memory lane, to where she used to live
near the blue cottage or close to the dreams of another life.

Since then dreams are gone and life has become quite dull
as stories take on no more wood, but instead use plastic strips
to tie down feelings belonging otherwise to sailing ships
venturing across oceans of hope and despair. They leave all in wonder
when they would return with the whales while running on smooth keels
to plow through waves running parallel to untouched shores.

Such shores are open to receive the wandering souls searching for grounds
to lay down to rest, as if some unusual happiness shall mark
both the beginning and the end on this earth, but not in the way
cucumbers are shaped nor like those huts with tin roofs to become
drums when it rains - rather like light throwing fragments of shades
in odd patterns into the winds some of which stroll in with the waves
crossing over deep blue waters who mention names like sea shells listening
to time narrating what people do on a single day -
if that is not a curse of money disguised as a beggar in a limousine,
then who notices a deep pessimism to indicate but another self defeat?

Since then, deep down, sunk to the bottom, there is a sizzling feeling
ready to ascend and to jump out of the water like a flying fish,
in order to beg from curious eyes searching the horizon,
for ways to live. And granted shall be the wish to finally see
the bearded man being washed ashore, exhausted after years at sea.

Indeed, Homer's Odyssey continues in our minds as measure of time.
The long journey left him the choice to survive like children do
in their fondness of belonging to secret places, ready to discard
what makes no sense. Always purpose links to the imagination
at risk to run wild, if perpendicular to the rays of the moon and not of the sun.
For that leaves the children with incomprehendable feelings imprisoned
like birds, thus easily frightened by metallic sounds, especially if hard and tough.
These barriers to understanding are not made out of wood, but elicit complaints.

Amazed by this universe, love remembers sea gulls swooping down
to crumbs strown out like a farmer his seeds into the sea behind the boat.

Once made out of wood people stand still, and risk to be left behind
not by the waves nor the tides nor by the children growing up,
but by the times themselves going on, going on, fading off.
It is like the sailing ship drowning at the edge of the horizon.
Thereafter the troubled waters are completely still:

a mirror of life and of unbelievable strength.

Hatto Fischer Athens 1994 (2^nd version: 2011)

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The drowning ship 1994