Down the road
against the blue haze
that hangs before the great ribbed forms of the mountains
people come home from the fields;
they pass a moment in relief
against the amber frieze of the sunset
before turning the bend
towards the twinkling smoke-breathing village.
A boy in sandals with brown dusty legs
and brown cheeks where the flush of evening
has left its stain of wine.
A donkey with a jingling bell
and ears askew.
Old women with water jars
of red burnt earth.
Men bent double under burdens of faggots
that trail behind them the fragrance
of scorched uplands.
A child tugging at the end of a string
a much inflated sow.
A slender girl who presses to her breast
big bluefrilled cabbages.
And a shepherd in the clinging rags of his cloak
who walks with lithe unhurried stride
behind the crowded backs of his flock.
The road is empty
only the swaying tufts of oliveboughs
against the fading sky.
Down on the steep hillside
a man still follows the yoke
of lumbering oxen
plowing the heavy crimson-stained soil
while the chill silver mists
steal up about him.
I stand in the empty road
and feel in my arms and thighs
the strain of his body
as he leans far to one side
and wrenches the plow from the furrow,
feel my blood throb in time to his slow careful steps
as he follows the plow in the furrow.
Red earth
giver of all things
of the yellow grain and the oil
and the wine to all gods sacred
of the fragrant sticks that crackle in the hearth
and the crisp swaying grass
that swells to dripping the udders of the cows,
of the jessamine the girls stick in their hair
when they walk in twos and threes in the moonlight,
and of the pallid autumnal crocuses ...
are there no fields yet to plow?
Are there no fields yet to plow
where with sweat and straining of muscles
good things may be wrung from the earth
and brown limbs going home tired through the evening?
_Lanjaron_