Gorecki’s mothers cry their supplications in regional languages now forgotten and if men are not compelled by the profundity of their sorrows to the bitterest of tears by the splendour of their voices to the most sublime of hopes by the length of their susurrations to a recognition of their own fragility then they’re no men at all the memories flood of a plane crash and feelings of invincibility was it me who stood so long ago on the rooftops of skyscrapers at the very edge, contemplating my emptiness my inability to die my impotence before life my fate in the hands of the Norns? was it me who lived without penalty free of attachment, of humanity of a heart to feel their sorrows? or was it merely a story I heard a dream I had in the reverie of my youth the memory of another epoch? I’ve forgotten now, who I was who I thought I was, or dreamed of being whether I even dreamed what it was that I lost but for Silesian folk songs I might not remember me at all 4-III-17