My eldest brother, the head of the family, is no more; he died on March 13^th. Everything in my family home froze, it is two days now that nobody has spoken; yesterday they greeted me with silence, my sister-in-law wept softly, even two-year-old Staszek, my late brother’s son, silently follows me with his eyes. Emptiness, emptiness, nothingness; it escapes me why I went out to the cart house today, and I saw a long row of rakes on the wall, some of them broken; my brother didn’t manage to fix them over the winter. I took down all those in need of repair; I knew where the hazel wood for this purpose, for the teeth, had long been stored, and I got to work.

Antoni Rząsa