In Wine Country

The sun paints courtyard and walls with autumn,

The fruit stacked in heaps all around,

Before them poor children cower.

A gust thins out old linden-trees.

Through the gate a golden shower rains

And the women blessed with child

Tiredly rest on rotten benches.

Drunkards swing glasses and jugs.

A hoodlum lets his fiddle sound

And smocks swell lustfully in the dance.

Roughly brown bodies embrace.

From windows empty eyes gaze.

 

Stench rises from the fountain's mirror.

And black, decayed, departed

The hills of vines dusk all around.

A migration of birds glides swiftly southwards.