I gave my students some words and phrases to do some writing: harvest, blossoming, pile of stones, black wooden box, Old Man Warner, chips of wood, slips of paper, draw, death.
Excellent pieces of writing done by two of my students!
photo by Matias Pickett in Vienna
New beginnings
It happened on the first day of harvest. The
man in the white suit had already left by the time I got there, I thought they
had called it a draw but he must have felt greedy at the time. Old man Warner
was like a father to me, and although I never did approve of his gambling I had
to admit that he was good at it. He used to keep all his winnings in a black
wooden box by the porch, which was gone too.
Later that day I buried him
under a pile of rocks since I wasn’t strong enough to fight back the tears and
dig a grave at the same time, I started to think how his last moments before
death were, and I just hoped they were peaceful. As it started getting dark I
made a fire with the chips of wood laying around the sawmill and thought of
convincing the town people to write nice words on some slips of paper for him,
yea that would be good.
Before I realized, the sun was
already blossoming over the horizon and I got up to go to school, it was almost
like a regular day again.
Matias Pickett, 11º A
Vietnam, 1968. Clouds
opened, thin strings of light reached earth’s eyed-shut darkness, blossoming
heads turned towards the sky’s forgotten face, looking for fragments of the
future, slips of paper carried by the wind: monsoon’s over.
Emerging from the fog that covered the land, general
Dead-End headed for Old Man Warner’s. He sat on a chair, picked out one cigar
from his black wooden box, reached last night’s cooking fire and gently lit it
with some still warm chips of wood. A gramophone at the corner scratching some
‘Ruby, My Dear’s faded strips onto the atmosphere, he took a puff, closed his
eyes, remembered his images of the deserted places he had seen flashing during
the day:
- Happiness flourishes out there. But the flowers are
others than those their tired eyes are capturing, they can’t see that the seeds
of evil have already been spread through the fields, humanity buried beneath
piles of stones, landscapes plunged into death, antagonizing forces in a
perpetual, fateful draw. All is germinating underground. As we produce dust,
dust gets into our eyes and, in the sudden blindness and lack of perception, we
produce more dust. The circle never ends…
Not being able to finish these fragments, Dead-End leaned
over the door. He saw the flowers blooming by the road and said:
- Harvest time is here.
Vicente Morais Magalhães, 11º A
