34-37 Degrees South - 2023

Looking for the missing gravestones
Elanna Herbert
Under the unexpectedly blue sky, canola paints itself across
the horizon to the outside corner of a red cemetery wall at
Tyniec Legnicki village. here, I imagine Kandinsky’s riders
or Marc’s blue horses passing by, heads flicking with
impatience, before the First War put an end to such flagrant
expressionism. but now, in this spring, yellow floods
warmth back to your church, reconfigured for the newcomers’
saints, still – nothing is left of your past, even your church’s
name is gone. yet somewhere, tightly buried here lie the
bones of my ancestors, bundled into soil with the stoic
prayers of a foreign language. inside the cemetery walls
between European trees and knotted ivy, the last
smashed gravestone or a broken granite cross piled to
rubble is all that was left.
“Niet Polskie”.
the head-scarfed grandmother shrugs their absence
asserting her control like a practical boot. beyond her
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