. . . And then something in this picture moved forcefully: The entry door, wrenched out of its frame, squealed. The weeds on the roof swayed gently. Footsteps (mine?) became audible. From above another tile slid down. From the only part of the ruin still standing the electrical wires announced themselves with a distant humming. But no one moved in the room that stood wide open to the sky, to the sated ground. No rat flitted across this trash heap. No person leapt over the broken moulding, over the shattered board, over the frayed wire, over the collapsed raingutter, not even over the fence (mentioned earlier) or the fallen chimney. Who destroyed this house? -- the severe question from afar. The answer, which could itself be a question, didn't come, lost itself not in the murmur of the day under the weight of the prehistoric being here, in the sudden forceful entry of summer and in the thundering extinguishing of memory. And I saw myself once again in the sweater of undyed wool (the one my mother knitted for me when I was growing out of childhood). I stood at the train station of the capitol city. (It was a time of peace.) . . .
text and photo: zarko radakovic, cologne
german translation: mirjana and klaus wittmann, bonn
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