I Went Away As If…,

by J. W. Cassandra

A nostalgic poem about the homeland – I present a new poem that I recently wrote, and the parent of which is nostalgia, one might say. Yet it is not quite so, because although it is about leaving, it is also about what sustains me: the landscape to which I belong. The trees, the forest, the many flowers of the meadow, the bends of the road - every little moment that makes the land on which the foot treads a home. The land that lives inside me: the chirping of the cricket, the grasshopper sitting on the tip of the blade of grass, the butterflies, the meadow embroidered with a thousand flowers, the colours of the sky... Which is only a memory, yet I keep coming back to it incessantly, because the thousand threads that bind me to it never tear. And although this is my memory, everyone keeps something in themselves that means home to them. The retaining power. And if you wonder why I left, I do not know the answer.

The poem is formally free verse, with irregular lines.

The illustration is the bygone landscape.

I went away by staying there:
My footprints are still alive in the wet sand,
I left my face on the pillow –
You would see it if you walked in the forest litter,
And I am not alive anymore, I am only afraid:
I cannot see you again!
For in my soul I remained there:
I can see every corner of you, in my thoughts!
I am seeing even now "my tree",
Although it had been cut out long before;
I am seeing the dense, dark forest
Yet in its place only a scrog grows;
I know the arc of your bends,
If I walk slowly on your old roads;
I know the path on your dark hills,
The meadow smiles at me, its thousand flowers are life!
Afterglow, shade, a thousand colours of paint,
A flood of scents also is your evening – all are a memory!
With a buzzing buzz, the melody of the meadow sounds,
A grasshopper leaps, a blade of grass flutters,
A cricket pierces out, the chirping chirps music,
A butterfly writes its flight around me,
My two hands carry the flower load of the meadow –

I went away as if I were just coming...

Written: 12 / 09. 2025 by J. W. Cassandra
Translated: 15 / 09. 2025, by J. W. Cassandra

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