Summertime
in Unterbergen/Wörtherberg

I am sitting in the orchard of my childhood - looking across a landscape so gentle and so unchanged - the hens and the cockrells sing their happy and contented song. I am visiting my brother; this is where I grew up and here I dreamt my early dreams.

It is very hot today and there could be no better place on earth to be than to lie under the cool trees planted by my grandfather. Marbled summer meadows with wild flowers of every kind are as I remember them; grass blades bleached by the hot sun intermingle with patches of yellow, lilac and green alongside a mosaic of pale yellow wheat ready for harvest; dark green stripes of Kukurruz fields with a hint of scattered orange, unrecognisable at distance as candle blooms crowning each plant. The heat has a scent - it smells of wheat and honey. Above the sky ist white with the heat of the midday sun as butterflies feast on this richly laid table.

This hour is a gift. Like the blades of grass I am swaying between past and present. I am hardly able to hold on to the here and now as the sounds seduce me back to long ago and I am so hungry for long ago. The present slips away; this ancient landscape holds me spellbound. I am so young sitting here. There are no people - just me and the summer wind - crickets are chirping and in the east sky is regaining its blue as the burning sun moves west.

All my memories of life in the roar of cities are drowned today - it seems as if I have never left and I am reluctant to wake up from this journey back so many thousands of days. I feel melancholic because soon this afternoon I’ll have to grow up - the big barn behind me shelters me from the present fo a little while longer.

Annemarie Sahloul-Fugger
London
BG-Hometop of page
Burgenlaendische Gemeinschaft  5/6 2004 Nr.389 Newsletter archive