#anna enquist

Arraigada más sólidamente que nunca

en la realidad- Diciembre, en mi bici,

tormenta alrededor de mi cabeza- compro

un libro que dice

cómo el tiempo pierde su dominio.

Durante meses tomo de la vida

no más de lo que me pertenece. El autor

está paralizado y enfermo. Él no puede hablar.

Oh, nubes cabalgando el viento, oh canto, oh amor.

It may be painfully slow yet asks for absolute attention. Fragments waiting for context; patient blank spaces, not at all ashamed of the white.

The blunt needle, cardboard cards with their earthy colors, grandmother's small scissors. Silence, light and reading glasses on. Pattern of the past. Pencil. Ready to go. They say: addiction.

The one who holds the needle is waiting for a savior, wants to be rescued from unbearable thoughts, is looking for a refuge, safety. Prisoners embroidered in their dimly lit cell and queens

were busy with needle and thread in their perverted state of marriage - now this flower, where the red passes into pink, and stalks of wheat, bending in the storm. Limiting thought to a square centimeter, consciousness sheer color and shape.

So: whenever you see an embroiderer, know you're looking at a tormented soul defending the walls with all her might from what is gradually going to destroy her.

you read the sky as a map. You feel the hours. Midnight, winter? It’s now, it’s here.

Snow had fallen, roof tiles showed shadowy grey through white, you could hear sparrows’ beaks tapping on stone.

The boy on the platform, you see the bag by his shoes, how he moves his shoulders, yawns, eats.

Till the train squeals past concrete, the wind's pull fondles his hair. You think a station in Germany, is it this late

you think. It’s all happening in grey convolutions hissing beneath your skull. All, all of it: the watery course of the tracks,

the stalks bled dry, tolling bells, fireworks, the boy. It’s nothing, a quivering cell wall, explosion, nothing.

#BlogTour The Homecoming by Anna Enquist

It’s a pleasure to take part in the BlogTour The Homecoming by Anna Enquist, translated by Eileen Stevens. About the Author Anna Enquist studied piano at the academy of music in The Hague and psychology at Leiden University. She is the author of the novels The Masterpiece; The Secret, winner of the 1997 Dutch Book of the Year awarded by the public; The Ice Carriers; Counterpoint; Quartet; and…