When the planted stakes had been splintered,
the delicate trellises kicked aside and heaped up
as though for a bonfire, the new tenants looked
about them with surprise, reigned over by a
righteous sun and livid in their sweat and the wine-
spray of celebration.
Below them the valley was thick with a new diaspora
and those few children who looked back gamely
saw only the glint of shotgun barrels, shimmering
like daystars flung recklessly across the hills,
saw the baby-plumes of smoke where their birthrights
burned.
The matriarch of the village was bundled down the valley,
wrinkled face as gray as stone, borne upon her
ancient mattress on the shoulders of six young men,
reverent but impatient with their burden, as if their
sleeves were tugged at by a new lover, slender body
shining like revenge.