Etna
1 Minute Read Time
translated by mira rosenthal
You say: I have to go to Etna
to pay farewell to my mother.
We take the winding way where tourist jeeps go
through the slag heaps of gray, black, bluish lava,
you collect pebbles along the shoulder
as if discovering traces of her.
I dreamed of just such a landscape:
she was working her way up the gravel and rock debris,
now I see: that scree was the slope of a volcano.
We turn off the road. Our feet get stuck in the dust.
Here and there a scrap of snow glistens. Colder, colder.
Streaks of smoke from the crater blend with the clouds,
memories with what lies in front of us.
I wasn’t there at her death. Just this dream.
Sort of like she wanted me to escort her.
Before she vanished over the mountain ridge, she turned to me
with a hand gesture that said: don’t be sad.
We enter the narrow track at crater’s edge.
Chipped, steaming basin.
You stop and reach with numb fingers
for one last pebble.
Read more from Issue 17.1.
