Bukovina,1989 Poem by Leo Yankevich

The peasant man still burns his leaves
which rise into Romania’s skies
like smouldering stars above its eaves.
With grubby hands he shields his eyes,

but cannot stop the acrid tears
from flowing down his ruddy cheeks.
The sum and meaning of his fears
are in the yellow smoke that reeks.

His bale of hay receives a tine,
his scrawny hound a fleshless husk,
while in his sty a greedy swine
wades in the slop of early dusk.