Memories, History and a Poem

I’ve written elsewhere about my mother, and her relationship to food growing up during hard times in Eastern Europe. I wrote this poem quite some time ago in honour of her memory, and memories. I think it sits well on this website alongside my themes of generations, family, and food. The potato pancake recipe is here.

Seasons

Into the wooden walls of our two rooms
we nailed pictures of Mary and Jesus,
their sacred hearts insulating us from the world,
the way the mineral in the mud in the walls
insulated us from cold and the forest,
where snakes hid curled in leaves,
as did poachers, and blackberries,
and honey mushrooms grew on deadwood,
and the wolf with his charred black nose prowled.

The seasons came and the seasons went.
The shoemaker gave a whole village bunions.
Church was a cart and a horse ride away,
and beetroot soup was feast of the week.
Cabbage, potato, pork, and potato,
made into pancakes with sour cream. Mother
peeled, Father grated, ensuring a meal
of sour and neutral, with hickory coffee.
And in the spring, we lacked even these.

The seasons came and the seasons went.
The wolf with his charred black nose howled;
beyond our two rooms, beyond the apple trees,
beyond our cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys,
our horse which ploughed the sugar beets,
barley, rye, oats, carrots, buckwheat.
Beyond the room for cooking, sitting, eating
suppers of noodles, flour with eggs in milk,
rye bread. The other room for bed.

Dessert was sleep. Too tired to whisper,
we smelled the hay of our mattresses. We listened
to the wind in the wooden slats at the windows;
that bang that mimicked soldier, bison, bear.
One final prayer to Holy Mother Mary,
whose picture restored itself before our eyes,
who brought Father, with his cart, back from one war,
who we believed would protect us when the wolf
came to our door. But terrible things happened next.

The seasons came, and the seasons went,
and for survivors, the past exists in the present.
But no one cares for history, or what happened
a generation or so ago.
And it’s only with our loss you will realise,
the seasons come, and the seasons regrettably go.

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