The dog woke me up, came into my bedroom, looked unnerved
and whimpered. In the living room that once had been a stable,
A mule stood munching on straw, but it was not the animal
the dog was frightened of, but of a little man in the corner of
the stable asleep on a hay bale, beside him an empty wine jug.
When he saw me, he screamed like he had seen a ghost and ran
through a door that was no longer there…the mule easy going,
followed suit. In 1952, the owner of the stable claimed he had
seen a ghost, a strange person who looked like a foreigner.
When I bought the stable/barn and converted it into a dwelling,
the villagers told me the place was haunted, but also with a sly
smile, said the previous owner was fond of his homemade wine.
The dog went back to sleep, while I picked straw off the floor;
the poor man had seen the future and I had seen into the past.
