Fiddler on the roof
I think that I was twelve years old;
I know that it was summer.
Dead wasps lay curled and dry
against the window-panes
and thick, black flies were stuck against
the slowly turning fly-killing paper.
It was hot and humid.
We stayed at my grandfather’s cottage.
I liked it up there -
and yet, I wasn’t entirely sure of that.
It was a strange and silent magic place.
The sound of army tank manoeuvres before the break of day
disturbed my sense of order.
It did not seem to fit in well with the forester,
who showed us where the wild boars came to feed
those early summer mornings.
Still, these memories are mostly artificial.
So probably I felt that way.
I think that I was twelve years old.
I know that it was summer: that is all.
But what I do and vividly remember
Is that painting by Chagall,
that hung above the fireplace
in my grandfather’s stone cottage.
Those muted, flame-filled colours,
the expression on the face of that gentle fiddling God
or clown, hovering over a sleeping town,
haunting it and keeping it together.
Those colours became part of me.
At times it seems I do recall
the dead wasps and the rumbling tanks
but I will always feel that violin within.