Shepherds of Europe!

They’d put me on a float. It was midnight. A tractor hauled me and some twenty-five villagers into the woods. We were going to cut down a tree. I’d had a fine dinner with, among others, the village matriarch: the best meat for miles around, served at half past ten. Always after ten here: at night I dream of wild beasts drifting through my stomach.

I was on a mission. For my Current Preoccupation I was going to bring you a poet.

In spring, summer and autumn he lives in a small cabin on top of one of the flat summits of the range. It’s a lunar landscape up there, but with big rocks and lakes. I’ve been up at the cabin before, in the days of the previous shepherd, who chained his dogs to the wheels of his car at night. Up there the new shepherd sleeps five nights a week under an almost world-spanning sky of stars. He’s a young and handsome lad with an upright quiff, a head taller and two waist sizes slimmer than the average villager. For someone who lives in a cabin and spends all day among cows, his clothes are remarkably fresh. He’s quite a dancer too. At the village feasts, he whirls across the dance floor with his equally tall sister. 

On the float, young and old stood together, thoroughly tipsy. I had a can of beer in my hand, and I saw people drinking a red wine-like substance from big plastic containers. There was no sign of the shepherd. We were some 600 meters below his cabin and I had no idea how high we were going. The dialect here is incomprehensible, and there was singing to be done.

It was the night before the Fiesta Mayor. For thirty years, tradition has held that on the night before the festival, a tree must be felled, that then is set up in front of the festival tent. Other villages have a square with a tree that gets decorated, but this village, at the end of the road up into the mountains, has more of a sort of yard (I won’t call it a crossroads) where the road simply ends. Thirty years ago, someone came up with the idea to fetch their own tree from the forest. That’s how they are here. They love a spontaneous beach party in winter, where all try to last as long as possible in the snow wearing only swimming trunks or bikinis. Years ago they started a yearly walk along the circa six villages in the valley: in each a meal course was savoured, and drinks: at the end of the day you can roll the happy hikers down the mountain. Am I indulging in exoticism? Yeah, and maybe we should coin the term authenticism.

I didn’t see the shepherd that night. I remember how we hauled the tree upright but it kept toppling over. The girl who climbed up in no time to hang the flag. And above all: arguments in which someone waved a chainsaw around. How can you go thirty years without settling on a method? The arguing is clearly part of the fun. The following evening we had a meal at long tables and danced afterwards. And he was there, the young shepherd.

Years ago I asked him what he did on those long evenings alone. Shyly, he had confessed it to me. Poems. It was nothing much, he said. Just some scribbles. But still: poetry. A dream had taken shape in my head: European shepherd poetry. ERB Dispatches would end with a poem by a real shepherd, writing from some lonely spot in Europe (and beyond). From the Lefka Ori on Crete to the Lyngen Alps near the Arctic Circle (do they even have shepherds there?), and from the MacGillycuddy’s Reeks in Ireland to the Urals in Russia. And beyond!

I approached the shepherd. Cheerful and bashful, he heard me out. But his answer was firm: absolutely unfit for anyone else’s eyes. Forgive me, reader, I have failed, but I have no intention of giving up. Shepherds of Europe! This is an appeal: give us your poetry. We are dying to read it.

Meanwhile, you may have noticed that I haven’t mentioned the location of this village. There’s a specific reason for that. One of my friends showed me a package he’d just received. Inside were pans with tiny holes. The price of gold, he told me, was so high right now that it could be worthwhile to pan for gold in the river. Yes, I’ll be joining him, searching for gold that I may have already found.