Straw People
Straw People

Summary/Abstract: It was December, the end of fall, 1972, and I was being transferred to the Third Infantry Regiment at N. As if in a dream I was taking leave of the stone walls that surrounded the school as if it were a dream; I had just finished at the School for Reserve Officers in Bilekje, but I felt no joy, something had withered, dried up in me. The other officers were saying good-bye, embracing each other; they were an avalanche that thaws on the spot, and I felt empty inside, I quaked in the air like an aspen, exhausted, amazed, and tied to that airy veil that wraps up good-byes. I looked at that honest, pure picture from far, so very far, but still there, at the center of that quivering aspic that was embracing and thawing. I know now that I was looking for that piece that had been torn off from me, the piece of my soul that rings somewhere among the stones of Herzegovina, wanders there, and cannot die.

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