Is it too early to be dreaming about holiday escapes? Or homes where it feels like you’re on holiday all year round? I rather like perched houses: after all, they provided our ancestors with such refuge. There is a beautiful poem by Romanian poet George Bacovia about the ‘lacustrine’ homes on stilts of long ago. Although, this being Bacovia, it is anything but cheerful… I’ll just translate the first stanza for you below:
De-atitea nopti aud plouind,
Aud materia plingind…
Sunt singur, si mă duce un gând
Spre locuintele lacustre.
So many nights I hear the rain,
hear solid matter cry and drain…
I’m all alone, my thoughts go back again
to the lacustrine dwellings.
