Inland Algarve Poem by Jan Oskar Hansen

The Inland Algarve

The landscape so oddly shaped
Had once been a domestic landscape
Walking along narrow cart-wheel
Tracks I often come across the remnant
Of dwellings that once had housed
Poverty-stricken people who had
Ploughed small and reluctant fields
Olive trees had grown wild and tall
Bearing bitter fruit.
Sone walls had no purpose sinking
Back to earth becoming rocks again.
A haunted landscape in the inland
Algarve and no one saw it doomed
Beauty.
Rabbits and boars dominated in peace
And sheep grazed in the glooming.
Stillness yet I sensed voices that once
Had loved and lived struggling
Against poverty and early death.