Since they’ve departed from the house, every last one of them—in the deserted household, the ancestors now gather like a braid of water of shadow, in empty spaces as lofty as domed centuries. Back to the oldest and most remote of them—they who had come to serve as sentries at the farthest edges of Europe, on horseback in carts in wagons, pleased with the peace they found pleased with the rich soil.
They who in the most obscure angle of the Carpathians proudly raised in Brașov a magnificent Black Church.

The air is heavy with remembrances as if its volume were of earth. The wooden frame gives a sign from the foundations. Bats unfurl themselves from sleep, from their velvets. As though issuing from the nothing of an ancient bell, a humming emerges, round as a child in the womb.
On this night the angel of the house comes down among them: out from the door of the hay attic, launching into motion with a single beat of the wings. Wrinkled robes, one long straw clinging to the hem. A loose sheet from a child’s ABC fluttering, fluttering.

Before the Journey all of them gather for the last time (oh, the aroma of lily and vanilla . . . below, in the cellar, a door bangs by itself).

They are together, all of them under the roof which—after tomorrow—will give shelter to others:

Blessed be this house once more which now becomes disentangled from our ways.
O Lord, grant us this day a sign of recognition.