For the fainthearted . . .

Fighting in a hayfield

Written in Spain in August 1988

The sweep of a scythe in a meadow,
anonymous figures on a summer’s day:
a pastoral idyll from a glossy brochure
as all such things that are never true.
The valley’s silence is disturbed by shouts,
latin tempers heated by a high noon sun.
romanticism shattered in a flurry of blows,
so it was, is now and ever shall be.
As if a guilty voyeur, I hurry on,
embarrassed at this glimpse of truth.
Fighting to live and working to die
and the land looks on unmoved.