07 03
luch1 en
All clouds of the sky seem to have gathered over the tousled pines, their tops being swung by the wind. May the gale come forth and roar, try to rock them, they won’t budge an inch. He comes, rolls a heavy pile of brewing darkness out over their battered heads, whips it up, tears it apart, presses the scuds together again and whirls them shorewards.
Streams of water are squeezed out, fall off. Poured upon paths, roads, fields, and meadows into puddles, ducts, ditches, and drains, having even the biggest run over, flow round all those little crippled trees, bushes, and thorny shrubs scattered about. Driven forward across the country, pushed off and downed deep into the peat, the moss, the bog, and the lichens, they pervade it all, until they reach the crusted stone benches where the sea sprays up squirting away into masses of drops strung along like close-drawn curtains dragged off to the farthest end of the land.
There you’re, hanging in the balance, the horizon gets out of the picture, and the sea, the mountains are melting into one. Only the brooms sit firm on their roots like clucking hens on their eggs not daring a move.
They stand the water, the streamlets, the watercourses flowing around, barely rendering shelter. Yet, the horses are keeping to them – large looming shadows in wafts of haze, grown stiff in the rain – sculputures wrapped in mistiness. Where should they go? They had been there. Any effort in vain: all boils down to the same. Just keep up and bear the downpour.
It’s bleak, like in a preserving jar, and I don’t get to the bottom of it. Who said the Irish rain would be of that lazy Celtic fashion drizzling, with no energy to pour? That must have been long ago. Not this one. This kind of rain is unlike any other, a perpetual power of wetness with no outlet to nowhere.
Empty garbage sacks puffed up pass flapping, pilotless aircrafts in tatters – loony birds trying to attack barbed wire fences. They’ll be getting trapped there wildly beating their wings.
The roaring has grown louder, as if the ocean rushed right round this shivering house, the wind having forced himself in through gaps, cranks, and hinges, holes, through crevices, cracks in doorpost bolts, and this slightly dysfunctional door. Things clack, clatter, crackle, whistle in the water tank neck, whizz in the chimney, hum in a tube, sum in a piping like wailing sirens in the high-speed subway of a spray nozzle. A post crunches, the window frame rattles, something is swept over the floor, clacks. Drops patter on the window sill, clink on the pane, tinkle, tap on the lintel, jingle like chimes, strum the rooftop gutter like ringing a bell.
Dozing while wide-awake, you find yourself on an unfixed ground, right? Night and day are fading – rainlike phantoms beyond time and space clanking on surfaces splat! slapping against shutters, splattering on slades splash! There clatters one from the roof, clashes with something, crashes on the floor – humph! Uh? What’s happening? Well, no, still the same: rain! Masses of drops still dribble, scatter, pitter down, platter, lap against the wall, rap on the railing, on the door running off in torrents –
For how long have you been here, Luch – hours? Days? Weeks?
********
Then it came to pass in the days of the occupation when they did everything to them, the Russians, and the cows put their heads in at the windows. And there, somebody came and cut them udders off. They killed the cow and all the women. There shall be no water no more. There shall be a new earth, and the old one will vanish.
And the man took the kid and went away with it. But where should he go? There was nothing left there. Houses destroyed, battered down, cars blocking the way, horses by the roadside with their bellies ripped open. Their flesh being sweet, he didn‘t cut a piece off though. But what should become of the kid? The father couldn‘t make it any further, hunger hath eaten him. He lieth himself down and says, Now it‘s my turn to die. Take the kid, sister, havest thou not three already? It shall give thou four.
to be continued….
Luch at share-iDea