This valley was occupied by wolves
it is said.
I was at the table.
I was drinking coffee,
drinking dark, dark coffee,
thinking of those wolves
that lived in this valley
and I do not lie when I tell you
I had dreamed of them the night before,
stealthy as they are,
faces quiet,
moving slowly like ghosts,
they with first title to this land
of many titles.
I was with my friends
drinking the coffee and we ate some bread
in this place where the blue birds nest,
the place where wolves lived
not so very long ago.
Some men came to this place, they say,
and they never came out.
They killed the wolves
and then they turned from their human flesh
into water, into thin air, into something
waiting for rain to fall
and when it did, they sank into the ground,
all because they killed the wolves
so beautiful beyond the shallows of this river
where I sit alone now
with a glass of wine before me,
the coffee all gone
In this place that was the land
of wolves,
the leaves of trees
rustle in the breeze
and soon it is early morning
and I am still sitting and find myself
in a place so suddenly different
in all its animal silence.