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Home. The one, the only place where the true umbilical of your soul is to a womb of ancient birth attached still, and always. Live in places that are foreign, alien, difficult to understand, full of people who do not speak your tongue or comprehend the shape of your dreams; live in places where you do not recognise the colour of the soil, or the shape of the things that grow in it, where a marketplace is an adventure filled with odd, mysterious fruit offered to you by strangers' hands; live hearing yourself speak an exotic language shaping the words you are saying with an accent that will never leave your voice; live knowing that you have chosen something and that some steps take no retracing, that you live always with that choice. But know that you will always find that it is somewhere else in some mystical lost land that you belong. Look up — how blue is your sky? Do you recognise the heaven that arched over the place where you took your first steps on this Earth? Live under alien skies — but the sky of your birth is eternally the unique shade reflected in your child's eye — and the memory is strong. [Ed. Note: Ninth part of a 10-part poem. « Beginning | « Previous | Next »] · · · · · ·
Alma Hromic, the author with R. A. Deckert of Letters from the Fire, was born in Novi Sad, Yugoslavia. Trained as a microbiologist, she spent some years running a scientific journal, and later worked as an editor for an international educational publisher. Her own publishing record includes her autobiography, Houses in Africa, The Dolphin's Daughter and Other Stories, a bestselling book of three fables published by Longman UK in 1995, as well as numerous pieces of short fiction and non-fiction. Her last novel, the first volume of a fantasy series, Changer of Days: The Oracle, was published in September 2001 by Harper Collins. Hromic is an essential member of Swans. She maintains her own Web site (with Deck Deckert) where she provides information about her work and the professional services she offers: ButterknifeBooks.com Do you wish to share your opinion? We invite your comments. E-mail the Editor. Please include your full name, address and phone number. If we publish your opinion we will only include your name, city, state, and country. Please, feel free to insert a link to this poem on your Web site or to disseminate its URL on your favorite lists, quoting the first paragraph or providing a summary. However, please DO NOT steal, scavenge or repost this work without the expressed written authorization of Swans, which will seek permission from the author. This material is copyrighted, © Alma A. Hromic 2002. All rights reserved. No part of this material may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. |
This Week's Internal Links
From Hawaii to Iraq and Islam - by Milo Clark
Oh Say Can You See - by Deck Deckert
Letter To My US Congressional Representatives Regarding Iraq - by David Lamb
Democracy Because I Say So - by Philip Greenspan
Grease Monkeys - by Michael Stowell
Sustainable Disparity - by Jan Baughman
The Anti-Mugabe Brigade - by Gilles d'Aymery
Zimbabwe: Life After The Election - by Baffour Ankomah
Wholly Derelict Journalism - by Alex Jay Berman
My Journalistic Dereliction - by Gregory Elich
Poet In A Dark Room - Poem by Sandy Lulay
Alma Hromic on Swans
Essays published in 2002 | 2001
On the Anniversary (September 2000)
Subject: Into Myth (September 2000)
Sadness in Novi Sad, Serbia (April 2000)