On the small hill farms
it’s lambing time again.
Inside the barn it is
breathily warm.
The old smell of dung,
straw and birth returns,
hovering over the pens.
Outside the world is held
in the tight fists of ice and snow,
the lambing pens now islands
of steamy breath and anxious
motherly calls.
These ewes have stood here
for centuries past.
The same who stood on the Judean Hills,
on Lakeland Fells,
in the vast Australian outback,
an ancient cycle of birth and death.
A stillborn lamb lies discarded,
its twin totters unsteadily towards
the ewe and life.
Orphaned lambs feed hesitantly
from strange figures holding bottles.
It’s early Spring.
The flock grazes peacefully,
lost lambs bleat pitifully,
until they find the ewe.
The sheep recognise
their public pastoral duty.
Artistically dotted over
rolling countryside,
they pose for photographs
which briefly reassure the world
that while sheep safely graze,
they can forget for a moment,
electric cars, greenhouse gas
and such imponderables.
The whirr of shearing blades
heralds a new phase.
Unshorn sheep protest noisily
at the fate of their bald neighbours
who splashing through the sheep dip,
skip to freedom.
The shearers expertly grasp each animal.
Held sitting on their haunches, the sheep
are comic, cartoon figures, faintly
stupid looks fixed on their faces,
truly sheepish.
Fleeces, thick and greasy, roll away
like winter suits.
The high hills are deep in snow.
It drifts silently into a lunar landscape.
Sheep are driven down to winter
in the barn.
At first light, shepherds search for
lost sheep in the snowy uplands.
Dogs sniff out the buried animals.
Sheep, safe in the barn, it’s Christmas Eve.
Do they hear the voices singing again
on far off hills?
Sarah Das Gupta is a writer from Cambridge, UK who has also lived and worked in India and Tanzania. Her work has been published in twenty countries from Australia to Kazakhstan. It has appeared in over 200 literary magazines and anthologies including ‘The New English Review’, ‘ Moss Piglet’, ‘Songs of Eretz’, ‘Quail Bell’, ‘Waywords’, ‘Cosmic Daffodil’, ‘Dorothy Parker’s Ashes’, ‘Hooghly Review’, ‘Meat for Tea’, ‘Rural Fiction’ and many others. This year she has been nominated for Best of the Net’ and a Dwarf Star’.
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