A city of clouds, of sloping streets. A fortified castle at the meeting of two rivers. A valley among wooded hills. Each day as the sun rises from behind the church towers the bells from across the city all at once echo against the buildings and down the narrow alleys and resound first as vibrations of air and then after a while as remnants of memory. I have wandered through zones of storm and calm, heat and cold, he would write. The bells rang and the notes collided and overlapped....
I wanted to write a short story about the Lithuanian poet Czesław Miłosz, about his escape from Warsaw at the beginning of World War II, about his time in Vilnius, and about the girl he left behind. And I wanted to tell this story largely using the language and ideas of the poet himself. (I've probably read more poetry and prose by Miłosz than all but the most diligent of Slavic scholars!)
This story, quite experimental at times, was not an easy one to find a home for. I'm very pleased to have this work published at the journal MudRoom. You can read it here.