Shepherd Wife

The shepherd wife has one word
for her cosmos - isychia:
here is isychia, she tells strangers.

Without amenities -
no water, electricity -
her house clings to a small
crease in the hills,
a tortoise shell;
sea forces strips of blue between
the planks of outer walls
that have no windows to admit
the sky, the hills' harsh beauty.
Fuel is scarce, so scarce
you walk for miles to find
a well-grown tree, or to fetch
spring-water with the donkey.

The shepherd wife comes smilingly
to meet me, bloodstains on her shoes
from the chicken sacrificed
that morning for the Christmas meal.
Her legs are swollen painfully
from hours tending open fires,
the bread oven; plain sadness
in her eyes for absent children.

Lover of the hills
where her heart lives
this woman was and is, although
each spring is brief,
the winters insupportable,
and summer an exactitude of heat
that withers skin and leaf.

The old austerities of place
devour her days.


Isychia (Greek): quiet, tranquillity