EXODUS:

The voice of San Etienne whispers old tales around the shadowed corners on soft summer breezes. The little town with the name of a saint & the soul of old grey stone, sits patiently waiting, not knowing its fate.

Once bustling with medieval minstrels & the jesting of jester’s jocundity, but the cracked cobbled streets now echo with the memory of the clip-clopping hooves & the laughter of long-ago children at play. This town, built eons ago, passing into the slippery hands of war lords & myriads of mayors & governors. Little  town, dancing through old centuries, to the tune of bullets & ballads, laughter & tears, knowing joy & pain, pest, plague & pestilence, drought, poverty & abundance. This little hamlet, between music & madness, nestled deep between meadows & mauve old mountains.

What now, Where to, Wherefore, & why? Times are hard; the young ones are gone to pastures new, searching for employment, sustenance, excitement, new loves & new hopes, leaving behind grey stone, grey earth & the grey heads of elders.

The land lies barren, the trading has ceased & nothing but the dry breeze moves. Old men sit on older wooden benches, chewing on tobacco & the dusty past, berets askew, confused at what is happening to their village. Old women with old fingers, weave old grey reeds into old useless baskets, merely to pass old marching time, mourning & missing the footsteps of children upon old cracked pavements.

The dried out church chimes it’s sad rusty clanging, calling the faithful few, whom have lost their little faith, to a mass which will never take place, by a priest who is no longer there. The ancient stone crumbles, the weed excels & the vulture sits watching from his naked tree.