about the fall

How mild the fall is?


I followed a track between tall, pale green cactuses, in this harsh landscape
where even the smallest plant has thorns, where bark and leaves, of even
regular trees, like carob and olive, are tough and will not softens to human
touch. Yet this is a landscape that once was tilled and now abandoned, does
this landscape’s common soul feels rancorous of being left to fend for itself?
I found a ruin. More than a ruin, a pile of stones only its outline told me that
once this had been a home where children had been born, lived and died
for generations, till someone said: enough! And left for pastures green, (most
likely USA or Canada,) poverty is only romantic in movies. Half of November
gone, I’m walking about in shirt sleeves the ground is rock hard and dusty,
the local paper tells us that 14 years ago the weather was mild too till January,
then it snowed and it was cold till May. Feel I’m being watched in the bushes
I see a boar watching me it is a wily old boar it sees I carry no gun, yet keeps
its distance; and high above me circles eagles; the landscape is teaming with
rabbits which used to be food for the people, who lived in the ruin (when
they could snare one) now business men, who have paid for a license to kill,
come here to unwind. To kill seems to satisfy a base desire in mankind; yet, it
is better a rabbit is scarified, then to see a dead Afghan child with eyes that
reflect the grey mountains, poppy fields and the blue unfeeling sky.

If this is a poem you need to reset your formatting.

So I can enjoy it properly.

What a Priest told me.
I was young, fourteen, late at night, I was hasting home, jumped over fences,
crossed a garden when I saw a naked woman by the fireside, wood fire casted
a warm glow on her body, washing herself with a cloth she dipped into a sink
bucket placed on a chair in front of her. She slowly cleaned her arms, neck,
breasts, legs feet and finally she washed the part where legs meet the body.
All in slow caring motion. She put a kimono on sat down and opened a book,
after a few minutes she put the book down looked out of the window, I was
petrified and hoped I looked like a bush, she smiled, to me or herself, I shall
never know. At this point I hastily left, woozy, confused and in love. Later
I saw her at the grocer’ she had bought flowers, looked up and smiled at me.
Of course I didn’t know, at the time, that she was one of Ruben’s women put
there to tempt me into a life of infidelity forever seeking perfect, chaste love
and not involved in the physical side that smells of under- arms transpiration.
If I see one of Ruben’s women, and she smiles at me I now her love is a dream
and with aching heart and regret I walk away .

Tanka
Ornamental pond
In the garden of sorrow
Is dry and lifeless
But can’t hide the memory
A child’s still face and wet leaves.