Night Music

She sits on the mountain that is her home and the landscapes slide away. One goes down and then up to the monastery. One drops away to a winnowing ring and a farmhouse where a girl and her mother are hanging the laundry. There’s a tiny port in the distance where the shore reaches the water. She is numb and clear because of the grieving in that world. She thinks of the bandits and soldiers who return to the places they have destroyed. Who plant trees and build walls and play music in the village square evening after evening, believing the mothers of the boys they killed and the women they raped will eventually come out of the white houses in their black dresses to sit with their children and the old. Will listen to the music with unreadable eyes.