The Elders of Sardinia

Over the fields and mountains they come,

The old ones, the great ones,the unbeaten,

Watched over by the nuraghe on the hilltops,

To drink deep from the springs and fountains

Of blazing water and thunderous red wine.

The old gods love and fight in their blood;

Carrying hundreds of years on their backs

Like sacks of potatoes, they hold the earth

In their hands,brethren to boar and bear,

Fearing no grave and forgetting no pleasure.

In tumbledown villages on mountainsides

They sit and play cards in dusty cafes,

Oblivious to the busy bewildered world;

Or herd sheep over stony gnarled slopes,

Small dark gnomes, wise without instruction,

Wearing black poverty as a widow’s weeds,

With earned grace.No less than at youth’s

Festival, they are lovers, dancers, fighters,

Gathering the wild herbs of the heart

From under the spiky wind’s crow-beak.

Wormwood isle of the sardonic! Stout souls

Who loved the Sunday dance after church

As their true Mass! They revel in an Africa

Of memories and songs,conquering all

Conquerors with the force of their eyes.

This aura has been with them since birth:

The sage and myrtle and juniper charisma

Of the macchia,where witches’ houses

Guard the sources of dialect in their rocks,

Words, as rich and various as bread.