#1222 - poem with every line for an ending -- Valley of Great Tarpatak

1222

7.v.23

2.127

poem with every line for an ending

Valley of Great Tarpatak

ekphrastic for Csontváry Kosztka Tivadar’s 1902 ‘View of Selmecbánya Látképe’

 

the cattle heads down

sleek to feed

 

all trees lean

 

how intricate

these few streets wend

 

a steepled village

the castle hill

 

mortar piles privilege

all stand to bow

 

one holds a rake

one’s bent to sheaf

 

as before the town the village

before the village

mountain, woods

 

paths of grass all trod to here

another with a scythe

as if – make way

 

a slope incised

E for Elizabeth, now gone –

 

but these are the peasants of her past

 

enduring much as mountains

 

there’s chimney to tell generations

 

in hayloft shade unseen

I believe the deed endures

that this by which we’re here

 

the world can have no other centre

 

bright to the sun now fallen as far

 

smoke to show a fold beyond

 

you can stand in front of the place that was

you hear this voice

   

there’s the kind of a sky

that could run round this world

 

so many greens to this dark