How can you know the water, who she is and where she begins? Everything we map and measure, those are merely human things. And the river we think we know, the one we call the Danube, she dreams far different dreams.
Your schoolbooks didn’t tell you, but the poets know the secret, and will share it only once. Here, hush, listen closely. Who doesn’t listen now will miss it, or who doesn’t have a poet’s heart. The river we call Danube rises softly night by night, drop by drop, into a realm of vapor and cloud, imperceptible to us, sneaks away while we sleep. She travels by starlight along currents in the sky, to drop, drop by drop, in some other place, where the people there give her another name: Nile. Amazon. Mekong.
Or she flows, free, to lands where another you and another I will call her, softly, by a different song. Our Donau, Dunaj, Duna, Dunav, Dunarea, Dunay, we’ll weave her name into our lullabies. Our best symphonies will play her waltz. We’ll call her by the name we gave her. But she will never turn around.
We think we know her because we know her miles, her depths, her curves. We point to those wide and gushing currents and say, “This side will be mine, and that will be yours, for as long and long as history replays itself. And for it, we will fight wars. And here’s the line where your cities shall begin, and here’s the line where the land shall be ours.”
We say we know her, the Danube, because we memorized the map. Because we dug up ancient treasures, distant traces of other lives, lived long ago, from her muddy shores. And we’ll pass the exam if we can say who conquered this portion or that, who sailed great ships along her waves, which important battles were fought along her banks and which important people died. But the river doesn’t stop for that. The river never will.
You can recite all the facts, say that she begins and ends in black. Black Forest to Black Sea. You can claim she surges past ten countries, in their current states. You can count the castles and fortresses, reminisce about fortunes and empires, create policies and compose histories of trade and peace and warfare. You can harness her for electric power, build cities on her banks, say she drives whole economies. But you still won’t understand the depths that she contains.
Maybe ask the long-ago dreamers who knew her by more than name, whose very sweat and tears and stories were the river’s own. Ask the Vinča what they felt as the morning sunlight touched her pale blue waves, or the Romans what adventure called beyond her every bend. Ask the banded demoiselle what her backwaters reveal, or the sandpiper what he feels as he glides above her shores.
Or leave the books behind and go, by moonlight, by bike, to her nearest sparkling shore. Leave the facts you mistook for feeling behind, and begin to listen. And you will know. Slip into a quiet eddy and feel the water slowly rise to touch your thighs, your belly, your hair as it floats. Let the river hold you, and whisper who she is. Become as free as she always has been. There is this, and only this.
© Irena Ashcraft 2023-10-31