”The land of Judita”

The return has started the day I left my country, promising myself never to come back.

In my late teens as world suddenly opened up I used the chance to escape from my tiny cage.

How much did I long to see the world. How ill prepared I left, eager to find my own path.

With more years lived away from the birth country then within there there marks my country left in me that no one could ever erase.

They haunted me in my sleep, in the shadows. It called me back. And year after year I ignored or refused.

One day, crossing the street I looked right instead of looking left and the train from the past hit me hard.

It send me packing my bags . It made my search for the erased, the bulldozed away memories.

I came with one question and left with hundred.

Was I the traitor, the victim or the vulture? what pushed me out and what called me back?

Why in every poet, a killer and a thief I saw myself, in every beggar, in crooked politician, and in the old nun there were parts of me in them too.

Why fileds of wheat had smell of my hair, the sound of frogs made me leap with joy. Why holding knife and cutting out heart of hunted down elk gave me weakness and strength at once… 

The traces of the past, the echo of generations linger in me like an old untouched forest. Crooks and killers, hunters and thieves, priest and saints all rest in me.

I am my country and this country is me.

 

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