Stories of the Poet and His Trips

Poetum Castle – Bridge over Waters - Path to the outskirts of the city

Poetry and the killing hand

You know I am timeless and that I was born and lived for many centuries. Many, many centuries ago I worked at the central bakery in Poetum a special bread recipe, with a mixture of wheat and oats, and wanted to apply it the scent of green field herbs. So, I went early in the morning to the field outside the center village of Poetum and, after walking one hour, I reached a plain where there were small houses and small size plantations. The image was a sea of ​​green herbs.

One of the houses had a stripped chimney, but coming out of it was a white and organized smoke as the rings of a chain of iron. The door was opening and a stout, portly chest with red hair and beard came out and sat on three feet wooden stool. He leaned his hand on his chin and his elbow on his right thigh. Arriving at the house and carefully lowering to avoid being seen by him, I looked over the parapet of the window. It was a poor, but comfortable house, with a square and single room with a thick woolen clothes, two layers of thick woolen cloths overlaid on a pile of straw where three children with long hair were resting . I could not know whether they were boys or girls

In the other corner, next to a wood stove, and working with the navel glued to a round and broad, coarsely knotted and tough wooden trunk rough, a little blond-haired woman was peeling several large potatoes and subsequently placed them on a kind of iron cauldron on the firewood. She sang a song to lull children and, amaze you, she smiled, dropped his knife and potatoes at every two or three minutes and turned back to caress a baby lamb who chewed grass and drank water in a pot adjacent to the bench where the woman was preparing his potato soup.

She was practicing her medieval cooking, singing and caressing the sheep. She caressed the lamb, peeled the potatoes, sang and watched the pet. In a flash, the big man entered the square room with a thunder of little steps and shouted something I could not identify. For his taut face and gestures of his right hand, which cut the air up and down, it seemed he did not like the music which was very audible even around the small house.

But when she wanted to reach the lamb, the man held tightly to the girl's right hand, raised his voice, took the wife with his left hand and the lamb on his lap with his right big hand over the belly of it, and carried them to outside the house. I turned my body and I went spying the scene looking through the edge of the profile of the corner of the house wall. The man clearly stated in the language of Poetum that the house was no place for animals, the lamb should stay outside.

The woman entered the house, and the man took a big plow for oxen and raised it vertically to make some repairs. Then he went to a mud hut to look for a tool. The woman left the house and pulled the sheep inside. The man returned to the plow, looked at the sheep and did not see it. He stiffened his body and bristled the hair of his arms. He resolutely entered the room screaming. I ran to the window, the children were crying, sobbing now. He dragged the girl out, saying possible profanity, threw her in a pile of wood and she screamed in pain when hit her chest on the wood. He took a rake, lifted the same on the air…

Poetum Castle seen at distance. Notice that the castle was built over the river.

There was a legend at that time among Poetum’s poets that if in the minute immediately prior to final action in the execution of a murder, the killer heard a cheerful and energetic poem it would stop the hand and killer’s instinct. So he would not commit the murder. That's when I ran to the other side of the wall and went to the front of the house, reciting in a high voice:

Rude and worker man

Your green herbs are witnesses

Father or not of these babies

You are the master of its surroundings and of these lives

Look at the hand digging the earth

Stop now to smile!

Tomorrow, a soft sun

Shall shine on your free eyes.

Love the lady, forget anger!

Hanger goes and the lady stays!

Create an ode to your good sense

The word’s love will embrace you

The man was petrified by my presence. He lowered the rake, gave his hand to the lady, lifting her up. He knelt down, looking at her feet, and apologized a thousand times in a descending voice...

When he turned his forehead to look at me, he could only see a figure that ran shaking his left hand back and forth. The right hand went up and down with the beam of green herbs, as a blind knife, cut the air and helped me to run to make in a second my herbs sweetened bread. The legend that a poem could stop the killing hand had already happened to me in the kingdom of Poetum ...