What A Free Day

I’ve left one thousand and four hundred kilometres behind me

and meet myself in Argeles sur Mer,

as if painted by blue horsemen into the Roussillon.

Strong wind lashes the pines and palmtrees

and in the steel-blue two innocent white seagulls are whirling,

I suppose they shout at each other,

as the stormy choir of the trees is roaring louder.

Flying sand is jetting the beach and the sea is coming to the boil

producing bright foam under the fiery sun.

Behind me rises the dark silhouette of the Canigou,

its slopes still sparkling by the white snow of last winter,

biting white into the blue.

Here, on the coast under the open sky a camp had been installed in 1939,

a merciless location for liberal refugees

who succeeded in escaping from the Spanish dictatorship;

no holiday resort!

A memorial stone only is reminding, nothing else any more.

All the villas, the hotels and campsites of a scenery full of zest for life

are gaining their appeal from freedom,

I am absorbed in thought.

My eyes are following the Pyrenees Mountains

how they are diving down into the Mediteranian Sea.

Over there, near Port-Vendres, the rocks were hollowed out

as war bunkers, reinforced with concrete,

today nothing but decayed useless cellar ruins,

empty from hatred, fight and fear.

Nevertheless present war strategy also established,

no one will ever learn,

a military territory on Cap Béar.

The sun is rising above smooth waters

and I feel inspired by the descending mountain ranges,

I swim into the sea to meet the sun.

What a free day!

Born of nature,

not at all self-evident,

because mankind keeps staying at a standstill

in arrogant incalculability.