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 VIII O such a night for scaling garden walls; to push the rose shoots silently aside and pause a moment where the water falls into the fountain, softly troubling the wide bridge of stars tremblingly mirrored there terror-pale and shaking as the real stars shake in crystal fear lest the rustle of silence break with a watchdog's barking.
Prev.
Back
Top