Holiday

How long do you think it would take

to get used to this? This after waking late,

ten minutes past eight, into the third hour of the day.

The light that hung in dust and sprays of roses

shamed us into memory of the old man, his brushed

steps and the crack he’d eased through at dawn

so as not to wake us, up to tend the new born goats,

suckered into being and now proclaiming

the awful brightness of the day to the valley walls.

We had no excuse to rise so late. On a farm

with one electric light there is no place for carousing,

and anyway we’d left dinner quick - if only to escape

the silence, the shadowed sight of a hunched and

toothless man in a face-off with a bowl of rice,

Hugo’s slow translation of how each brick

was carried here by horse, the woman watching

and not eating. People learn to lend their lives

to what’s in front of them, I said, brushing

ten hours’ sleep from my eyes, before we rode

on hired horses away from paradise to fish.