Poem: Cottages
Wide, dirty swathes of grey are there under the mountains and over them where clouds and dust become the horizons of distant scenes; No architect planned their facades and they grow out of the soil, tumuli of mud and dung blended with straw dreams- these cottages know something about the seasons, the song of the thrush, about the hearts of men and the bellowing of oxen in far pastures; As stolid as peasants, they quietly sit, oblivious to the haste of centuries. ------------ ----------------- ------------------- ------------------ From Riverbeds Flowing, 1999 ed (an earlier version appeared in an edition of A Sad Piper but it was extensively revised thereafter)