![\"jozef_rapacki_druciarz\"](\"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/Jozef_Rapacki_Druciarz.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I<\/p>\n
My education began
\nat the age of nine,
\nsecret lessons held
\nonce a month by
\na masked tinker
\nwho frequented our village.<\/p>\n
Crouched among the evening dust
\nin the alley behind the butcher’s shop,
\ndrenched in sweat and shadow,
\nwatching intently as he drew
\nstrange symbols in the dirt. <\/p>\n
He spoke with a heavy Slavic accent
\nand wore bandages all over his face;
\nI once asked him what he looked like underneath
\nand he said that if I asked him again,
\nhe would show me.<\/p>\n
I learned how to dowse for water
\nand navigate by stars alone,
\nhow to tell a good can
\nfrom an irradiated one,
\nand of course to work
\nthe common metals.<\/p>\n
At the end of our lessons,
\nhe would often speak of his life before,
\nliving along a great body of water
\nso large it circled the world,
\nebbing and flowing, pulled he claimed,
\nby the movement of the moon,
\nin everything he said, there was magic. <\/p>\n
II<\/p>\n
For homework I was assigned
\nto fix our farm tools,
\ncommon axe and spade work,
\nquickly moving on to repairing
\nthe plow and hydrator,
\nalways prone to clogging
\nduring the summer sands. <\/p>\n
Long afternoons spent
\nin my family’s toolshed,
\nbent over artifacts left
\nby my grandfather,
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153junk from before\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\nas my mother called it,
\nincluding a rifle and phonograph,
\nwhich eventually I got to turn,
\nbut never found a record for. <\/p>\n
III<\/p>\n
I used the rifle only once,
\non a dark summer night
\nwhen three men came to our farm,
\nmen from outside the village,
\nwho had heard my mother
\nwas left alone with three young
\ngirls and a strange little boy.<\/p>\n
When they tried to break inside,
\nI hit the largest one in the chest, on my first shot.
\nhe fell to the dirt, writhing,
\nthe rest just stood there for a moment, staring,
\nbefore running off, back to their alkie
\nand their dingy little shacks on the edge of town. <\/p>\n
They never bothered us again. <\/p>\n
IV<\/p>\n
When I was fifteen,
\nmy mother died of pox
\nand I chose to leave the village;
\nmy older sisters had both married
\nto good local farmers, like our father,
\nand the third, our youngest, took to the cloth. <\/p>\n
I had known since the day
\nI met the masked man
\nthat I would go away,
\ntraveling the world as he did,
\nthough I would return many times
\nto visit my sisters and help where I could. <\/p>\n
But before I left,
\nI asked him again,
\nwhat he looked like under all
\nthose tightly wrapped,
\nthick-white bandages.<\/p>\n
And he showed me. <\/p>\n
V<\/p>\n
The burns were extensive,
\nworse than I had ever seen,
\nhe had no hair and his flesh
\nhad turned black in places,
\ntaking on the half-melted look
\nof a forgotten candle. <\/p>\n
His left eye was almost completely
\ncovered by a thin layer of skin,
\nhe had no lips to speak of,
\nhis worn and yellowed teeth
\nsimply jutted out at any odd angle,
\ngiving his appearance an almost
\ndemonic cast in the gloaming light. <\/p>\n
I stood there for a long time staring,
\nas he told me how it was going to be.<\/p>\n
You can have this village, it is yours,
\nbut there will be others, where I ply my trade,
\nyou are not welcome there,
\nyou must travel further out, as I did at your age,
\ndo you understand? <\/p>\n
Yes. <\/p>\n
You know the signs of the marauders,
\ndon’t let them catch your scent
\nor you’ll never lose them
\nand do your best to skirt the crimson wood
\nor you’ll end up handsome, like me.<\/p>\n
Do you understand? <\/p>\n
Y-yes. <\/p>\n
And never take a job for free,
\nalways make trade for something,
\nthis way the world can keep turning,
\ndo you understand? <\/p>\n
I nodded, but he only laughed. <\/p>\n
No. You don’t. But you will. <\/p>\n
And with that,
\nhe wound the mask
\naround his face once more,
\nand walked off into the growing night,
\nout of my village and out of sight,
\ninto a world that belonged to him,
\nand that one day, would belong to me. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I My education began at the age of nine, secret lessons held once a month by a masked tinker who frequented our village. Crouched among the evening dust in the alley behind the butcher’s shop, drenched in sweat and shadow, watching intently as he drew strange symbols in the dirt. He spoke with a heavy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1219"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1222,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1219\/revisions\/1222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}