juleshorne

Salix Caprea

They've become a liability. In just two years, they've grown ten-twelve feet. A whole plantation's worth, sucking the ground dry.

She planted bayonets – little six-inch plugs. Didn't know you could do that so easily. Just hammer a stick and the ground and watch a tree grow.

And grow they did. Almost palpably. You turned your back and they were up there, pushing, rising. Thin wands that bent in the wind.

She was going to crop them. They were as prolific as grasses. Willows for baskets. She'd sheaf them up and lay them in water to soften. They'd be bent into rounds, pods, coffins.

And when she died, they just kept growing, quick and on.

She meant to die. She knew.

And now they're ten-twelve feet and a liability. They bud in March, these down-plugs that feel so warm on your lip. Wands in a vase, wands bending in the wind.

We cut them down and they keep on coming.

22/2/2008

George Peterken

Woodland Conservation and Management, 1981

p 163

http://www.british-trees.com/guide/goatwillow.htm

Fortgereiset

'Fortgereiset,' said the sign. Its extra 'e' gave it away as an antiquity. 'Gonne Away', it might have said, in a mediaeval sort of way.

Olesch had gone. There was no mistake. He'd left nothing behind but that sad, tattered sign. The rooms were completely bare, save for dust and flies on the windowsills. Oblongs of dirt marked the places where pictures hung. The walls were yellowed with rising intensity from the forgotten smoke of years. Spiders had hung in the cornices and chandeliers, covering them in filthy lace.

But there was still a smell. Part tobacco, part rosin. It hung there, impregnated. It was the nearest thing to a ghost. A fiddler ghost, his pipe clamped in his teeth, up and down the scales, biting in furious frustration.

And there was still a note in the room. It heard the door click and sang out. Sympathetic resonance. Straight and pure as an open string.

27/2/2008

Heinrich Heine

Atta Troll, 1846

p 143

http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/7wint10.txt

Fremden Menschen

They were strangers. He'd never before been among so many strangers – tall and bent and wide and old and shuffling about the harbour, waiting, running. Most of them were carrying cases. If they weren't carrying cases, they were sitting on boxes strapped with leather. They were wearing too many clothes for the weather, he noticed. Keeping their belongings about them. No doubt they had money sewn into their hems, like him. It thickened the bottoms of his trousers. They swung, heavily, and scoured his ankles. It hadn't been a good idea.

He'd always lived among people he knew. It was a village. He didn’t know if it was big or small. It was just home. But now he was here, by the mighty ships and the crowds of faces and the shouts and clanks and calls, he understood he'd never really lived. Everything he'd known was a prelude. Everyone was the smallest of families.

And now he was among strangers, and felt excitement knot his belly like a sickness.

Birdcatcher. That was her name. He lifted his suitcase and zigzagged his way along the wharf.

8/2/2008

Botho Strauss

Kalldewey, 1990

p 61

http://www.versalia.de/Rezension.Gorki_Maxim.117.html

The Report on Television

The report on television showed a bluesman. He had bad teeth and a beard down to his navel. He had a three-string guitar and a resonator from a tin of sweetcorn. The presenter winked at the camera and pouted at the guitar, which was stuck with duct tape and looked like a health and safety case.

And then he played. Just three notes on the three strings, just enough out of kilter to sting on the ear. He played them with his big horny thumbnail, thick as a coin, four aching-slow beats with a couple a extra ones in between. He played till all was quiet and the presenter had retired herself out of shot, just him and his three-stringed guitar and the lights and the song.

The song was about a woman. A pretty woman on the wrong road to nowhere, dolled and pouting and blank-eyed as a piece of road kill.

The presenter had her headphones on. She was taking a call. He played and sang a song that came to him right in that moment, from godknows where, like they always did.

9/2/2008

Raja Shehadeh

When The Bulbul Stopped Singing, 2003

p 51

http://www.bnn.ca/