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S M Hillier

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Village Fugitive

When it was over, they counted casualties:
Clement and Jean, brothers, were shot in Marseilles.
            Four others sent to Mathausen,
were buried now, their youthful photographs
            icons in the graveyard.

One man came back and within a year had killed someone,
            but the police were not told.
They had never come to that village even during the War.
            Just stayed smoking in their well-lit block-house,
only going out to check the loads on lorries.

So he left and lived in the woods, which higher up
      turn to forest. Some thought he was close by, others said
he ‘d climbed up to where eight hundred years ago
        there’d been a chapel and a Pope had once said Mass.
Though people said they’d seen him – some claimed he often came
          to the village after dark, it was one of those things
that was talked of less and less, then not at all.

In the forest the hunter’s trails are marked with a blue dot
           splashed on the tree trunks, but there are
other paths where now the grass is barely bent
       which lead to ravines or to stony outcrops
with a view of the whole valley. There are shelters
    built like a honey comb, no one knows how old.
But when you can at last see into their blackness
         after the intense sun, you cannot tell
whether someone has been there. He would be eighty-four by now.

 

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