Those
early mercenaries, it made them ill -
leaving the mountains, leaving the
high, fine air
to go down,
down. What they got
was money, dull crude coins clenched
in the teeth; strange food, the wrong taste,
stones in the belly; and the wrong sounds,
the wrong smells, the wrong light, every breath -
wrong.
They had an ache here,
Doctor,
they pined, wept, grown men. It was killing them.
It was given a
name. Hearing tell
of it,
there were those who stayed put, fearful
of a sweet pain in the
heart; of how it hurt,
in the heavier air, to hear
the music of home - the sad pipes - summoning,
in the dwindling light of the plains,
a particular place - where maybe you met a
girl,
or searched for a yellow ball in long grass,
found it just as your mother called you in.
But the word was
out. Some would
never
fall in love had they not heard of love.
So the priest stood at the stile with his head
in his hands, crying at the workings of memory
through the colour of leaves, and the schoolteacher
opened a book to the scent of her youth, too late.
It was spring when one returned, with his life
in a sack on his back, to find the same street
with the same sign on the inn, the same bell
chiming the hour on the clock, and everything
changed.
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