Melpomene

The forest bitter, spiky, no shore breeze, no foothills, the grass grows matted, death will come with horses' hooves, endlessly over the steppes' mounds, we went back, searching the sky for the fort that could not be razed. The villages hostile, the cottages cleared out in haste, smoked skin on the attic beams, snare netting, bone amulets. All over the country an evil reverence, animals' heads in the mist, divination by willow wands. Later, up in the North, stag-eyed men rushed by on horseback. We buried the dead. It was hard to break the soil with our axes, fir had to thaw it out. The blood of sacrificed cockerels was not accepted.