Feather

Richard Hughes

A feather on the patio.
Dark grey, black.
Fallout from a spat
I heard cause for earlier.

A rook, I think, until
I turn it over
and iridescence
flows to the tip.

Did his fledgling flight dip
through the rainbow
for a spectral coating,
to leave behind wing shape,
a stamp of identity?

A thumbprint
on a freshly glossed windowsill.

A fingermark
on an Old Master
whose image is stored
at the back of the mind,
to be carried with you;
heavy with comfort,
light as a feather.

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Innocents

Richard Hughes

Travellers bring rumour
into our orchards. Children play
with unladen mules as we listen:
portents, a birth, royal displeasure;
some recall the talk of wild men
crazed by long vigils in stony wastes;
a king, governor, deliverer,
words to us as hard as husks.

A goatherd reports three strangers
on rich steeds hastening eastwards,
silhouetted by moonlight.
We turn back to our fig trees.
Stories are told on smoky evenings.
Content to sleep soundly under night skies
crisp with milky stars, we accept each day
as a struggle for balance. Distant
agitations of the powerful
are stirrings in an unfathomable pool.

On the plain, horsemen, like the dark core
of a dust storm. Do they come to force
new taxes? Conduct another census?
Why are there so many of them?

Their arrival mutilates silence:
shouts, threats, commands; horses snort in alarm.
Ours is a small village. There are no
places to hide. There is no resistance.
Clubs and swords do the work quickly, then
the wind of their rage blows them
like a pestilence to the next settlement,
leaving us in a deep childless silence,
all our wells drained.

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