abandoned village

An Abandoned village

Somewhere in Iberia, packed away in deep gorges
there are time-forgotten villages of houses built of stones
dank inside cold in winter and never cleaned
there are no roads, only tracks from sheep and dwellers
small parcels of land to plant beans and potatoes
wine and Madrona (strong alcohol) is made from wild
growing vines.
Isolated, the human stock was low cousins
tended to marry each other, which in time produced
many half-naked idiot children sat in trees like apes
when not in the grass touching each other genitalia
The men in a hopeless village died young, like Ernest
of drink and bad food.
The women wore skirts grime by filth the cackled
toothless, but tried in their mental incipient way
tried to keep order, naturally, they laid down with any
man who had drunken lust had sex with any of them
if a young person got out, possibly by instinct
they never went back, not even for a visit
 and who blame them, the childhood had been
 a nightmare
In the end, a village like this died because
of human neglect
and overgrown despair
Today, many of these abandoned villages have
been spruced up shoeing tourists who idyllic life
was in the old day