August 4/ 3:15/lc

How you got lost. You of  the Bird House: fifty years: one long night: a single iron bed, face facing the wall: dark of the moon.

Today you walk up the hill to Akropolis to meet the red boy. All the way there you repeat the phrase: How you get lost ... How you get lost—so as not to.  Cutting the wine, so as not to. Four hours translating murder and mayhem. Chit chat: Red boy's been to the Mekas tribute in Moravia. He's seen Blood Simple and is infatuated with the term.  

The iron bed of night. Its utter silence:  "Did no one in all this time think of picking up the phone and calling the Hungarian Embassy?" "Nyet."

Doing this, turning from one language into another, you worry you'll lose something, something always gets lost.  

If I sing you an old song will the years return? -
          " O brother, what are they doing in this room?
          They are kneading the war bread
          They are rolling out the war bread..."

"Where does it come from?" the red boy asks.  "It's old," you say. "You kill someone, you murder someone. Afterwards, the trauma, the violence: it empties you, you go dumb ..."

Thinking what you didn't say, wouldn't say, turning in the iron bed of night, thinking you're losing it.

They keep calling your fellow inmates your 'neighbors.'  "He keeps himself to himself," says Ilya, who has slept in the 'neighboring' bed for the past twelve years.  And no one to speak your language: what did you do in that room, needing this? You of the Bird House?  "It's been more than fifty-three years since he last had a proper conversation."  

"Don't worry, there's a word, we'll find it, it just may take some time—"

Needing to speak: so as not to. All attempts to talk to you in German failed. Half a century. Your face to the wall. In the dark a bird flies into glass.  

What are we doing in this room? Kneading the languages, rolling out the languages side by side. "His body is crookedly against..." "Slumped?" "I want it biblical there—" "Torn asunder?"  "What do we do here?" "We make up a word—the rabbled millions..."   Hours later: pavement dark with rain: he turns towards the horse, you towards the cemetery:  

Going home. But realistically there is probably no trace of you there.

It can be traced to the Ukraine and begins with a bird bringing war tidings to a family. They decide the youngest brother must go to war. He's only nineteen ... after a time his horse comes galloping home and tells of the horrors of the battlefield.  

How you got lost. Said wrong. Said nothing. One sentence after another.  

First a POW camp in Siberia, then a psychiatric hospital deep in the endless rolling whiteness.  

"I think it's from Red Harvest."

You, you've  kept to yourself.