The peasant man still burns his leaves <br />which rise into Romania’s skies <br />like smouldering stars above its eaves. <br />With grubby hands he shields his eyes, <br /> <br />but cannot stop the acrid tears <br />from flowing down his ruddy cheeks. <br />The sum and meaning of his fears <br />are in the yellow smoke that reeks. <br /> <br />His bale of hay receives a tine, <br />his scrawny hound a fleshless husk, <br />while in his sty a greedy swine <br />wades in the slop of early dusk.<br /><br />Leo Yankevich<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/bukovina-1989/
