The Village Poem by David Levitas

In the village or hamlet there lies another currency,
Beyond the ken of side-walk timetables,
The bars that vend the ciambetta
Among the tinkling glass of chandeliers and shiny smooth fluting;
To that you must walk upwards long sheer banks of shrubbery and angling trees
Along a path that bears not cavalry or the shooting grind of auto-tune;
It is a lonely track up steep mounts where winds the river below,
And in a Wood, not marble lies the soul's sweet depositary;
A hostelry for the rough hewn soul's bare rectitude
Where flows his sins and his unbarred confession;
His conscience's fecklessness; no more, no less
Than the actual imagined crimes of Caen
Or any bottled city; where tapestries mock the sea-wreck
Of innocence and advantaged distorted rectitude, with promises not made;
Where ex-Norse angels trample in the mud with white booted
Twin horned demons, out Valhalla.
Here the peasant transmits his sufferings to the boards and panals and pictures
Of what he wishes but his frailty tore; a shies the cure, the purple bishop
Pricked phantoms who roam the streets, like hot wires at Caranton.
He knows the mind bending games that fickle your fancy,
A joint the thwarted love and power of misspent abused commodores,
The chain mailed ghost ships who with totem a bow, rape nunneries
And betwixt and between a mock buffet and public/private games, throws in the towel.