Horses and Embers
I had this luck, let’s call it luck:
I sat at the table with rich people,
I sat next to them and I listened to their language;
Their words, sharp knives to the target.
The nicest was a Sisyphus
Who had been a lathe operator before –
But had not given up,
He had worked extremely hard at night school
And had become manager.
Once, in China, I uninterruptedly went by train for 23 hours with the managers.
We were given beds, not chairs.
The top manager said:
“I want a chair, I would even give four hundred Euros for a chair!”
It sounded to me like “My kingdom for a horse!” and suddenly, I got scared.
“Do you think I’m small?”, he asked me point blank.
And all of a sudden, I did not recognize him anymore:
His legs had stretched and his head touched the ceiling,
And his eyes, as large as two screens, were following me.
That’s what it means to have money, I thought,
There comes a day when you go by train for a long time,
There comes a day when you get just a bed with a pillow and sheet,
Of course you’ll be a tormented man,
You have to lie down like the dead do,
And meanwhile you miss so many landscapes or what you can see through a window,
You undoubtedly get tired,
The long road starts changing you,
(You might even kill your old self).
It’s best not to have anything to give away,
And then your mind is clear,
You come to terms with the day and everything it brings along
And you hold on.
When you return home, you walk through the door and you tell yourself
“This is my kingdom!”,
You snuggle in your small bed,
Put your head nicely on the pillow,
And you don’t have to endure anything any longer,
You fall asleep and dream horses and embers.
Cristina Cretu
Writer
Bucharest ,Romanian
