A Homeless Man

There was always a place for me to come back to.

I never gave this fact a thought, and I had little understanding for others when I would see them wandering aimlessly.

It came to pass that one winter – as if by the irony of nature, the winter's most bitter January night – I had a place to come back to no more. It was locked, nay, sealed beyond unlocking.

I suffered an uneasy, baffling pang: a peculiar sense of being lost struck me suddenly.

I left in hope of finding a shelter, to get through the cold winter's night, to live to see the morrow.

There is none, there is nothing – in these still early hours you are loath even to ask for help lest you should be shamefaced.

Time, oh lingering time: would it were that time always passed thus slowly.

The dawn is nowhere near to come, and the hour is unknowable: how is it that there is nothing, nothing for me to see?

'Tis a winter I shall not venture to describe. If you hadn't felt it yourself, you couldn't understand.

Still worse than this winter is the feeling of utter homelessness, of having nowhere to return to.

The plight of a homeless man was so hideous to me that I hadn't even noticed that I was freezing cold.

Now I understand the blessing of a warm home. Yet, what an ordinary thing home is - when you are possessed of it.

A stroll, a stroller strolling endlessly; at last, at last something is up and about and early in the morning a café is open.

Ah, coffee, and heating: they had never felt so good!

Some people stopping by, on their way to job.

I observe them, and think to myself how lucky they must be to have slept last night, how fortunate to have a home to come back to after work.

(I think further to myself: ) to have somewhere to come back to is the most wonderful happiness there is.

How little is needed for happiness, now I understood: to have somewhere to come back to.

I know that these homeless people are not to blame for their bad fortune, just as I was not the night before.

It is evil men and Evil in them that are ur happiness, our feelings, our jobs, our family and lives.

If for one night only evil men were wihout a home;

Perhaps then better people (I pray to God) they could become!

Author: mr. sc. Miro Matijaš, prof.

Zagreb, 2018.