I took a walk through the city center one night after a long fight. It was about something dumb, like the dishes or who had fed the bird last; but it had ended in shouting. The kind of shouting that becomes blinding, that fills up the air with a red haze of anger and you just lose sight of anything resembling reason. And so I was walking through the early summer evening air. Trying to let the anger evaporate. I was doing my best to think of the many reasons I still loved her. Trying to think of the glue that held us warmly together, but with each warm thought of love the anger would rise up from the depths and swallow the love. The more I tried to love, the more I just felt overwhelmed with bitter anger.
This went on for several blocks until I heard a voice mournfully singing. I looked to find a man with thinning hair perched atop a stoop with an accordion. I stopped to listen. This is what he sang:
Take me....
Take me...
Take me back to the land
that tore the iron curtain down
Take me back to
The salty air
and colorful houses
Take me...
Take me...
Take me back
to Gdánsk
Take me back to Gdánsk
Sometimes Danzig
but my darling city
will always be only
Gdánsk for me
Take me...
Take me...
back to Gdánsk
my one true love
I felt tears at the corners of my eyes. I slipped the few dollars from my pocket into his accordion case. He smiled and just shook his head sadly, as if to say this was a heartbreak that a plane ticket could never mend.
The stars had begun to blot the blue out of the sky. I walked on, finding that the old man's song had blotted the anger out of my heart. I was left with only longing and love.
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