The words of a poet, chosen with a sure stride, hold the history that is about to turn its back on the present. -- Toshiyuki Horie All the water in this world is connected somewhere to the water of our homeland. If you surrender to this sharp and gentle description, you can swim to lands you never knew. -- Yuri Nakura This is the latest essay collection by Kayoko Yamazaki, a poet living in Serbia, a country in the Balkan Peninsula. Belgrade, the capital, is likened to a phoenix, having been destroyed by 150 wars in the last two thousand years, and then resurrected each time. From there, a journey through time begins, circling the small tributaries that connect to the Danube, the second largest river in Europe. The towns and villages recorded in this book have all gone through a harsh history, no less than Belgrade. Each town, each village, holds its own past. In the taste of the local firewater called rakia, the wine, the meat dishes and cheese, and in the way people live, you will smell the wind of the land and hear the whispers of the small waters. The small waters flow into the Danube, which originates in the Black Forest of Germany, and continue their journey to the Black Sea. Your journey is about to begin. When you think of things that have lost their form and things that are invisible, the land becomes your book. I wish you a good journey. -- "The Journey is About to Begin"