An occasional madness, airborne
from without the seeming calm
of light that softens even underbrush
and stones amid the evergreens,
peasant-house or crumbling fortress
fading ochre to white,
it arrives with a terrible hush
again, multimillenary, recurrent
moaning of the land in submission,
sightless rattle of secured shutters,
polishing the sky a glasslike blue,
thwarting life’s heavenward reach to where
the trees still bend southeastward
even when the wind dies down.
—Stephen Sartarelli