Playing with the light

After a morning in Pézenas collecting the copies of the Occitan newsletter from the printer and getting some mounts made by the picture framer, I wasn't happy with any of the photos I'd taken. As soon as I got back to the village, though, I noticed the light on the fountain in the marketplace, on my One Street. This place has been the centre of the village since the market was moved in the mid-nineteenth century from la place Vieille (whose fountain dates from 1678). As the road through the village, the D13 and my One Street, has always been a thoroughfare between the mountains and the sea, the fountain was important for travellers as well as inhabitants as a source of drinking water from the spring on the nearby hillside. Shamefully, the mairie decided a couple of years ago to 'save water' by putting the three remaining fountains in the village on a closed circuit, so it is now forbidden to take water from the fountains.

Playing with the light

In its beginning
this life came straight
from the source,
La Resclausa rising on the hill,
channelling water from deep
in the limestone.
Plenty for all, for women
men, children to shoulder earthenware
jars and heavy buckets to homes
in shadowed streets.

Red warning - eau non potable -
now it's forbidden
to draw from the light,
une honte, a disgrace,
say the old who remember
but the sunlight plays on

© TW