Aubeterre:
It is on the
hill rd. to Aubeterre that the fortress Chalais
first shows the strength & the variety, from the height one fells the caged battlements.
After yesterday’s
rain she is set squarely into the heavy
clouds, and the tip of the
tallest poplars come just flush with the base of the
wall, for all the reparations of the XVIII century, the strength of the position sill communicates itself by the
sense of crouch & spring in the
masonry.
[...]
The
route to Aubeterre may be properly termed
walking. The
rd. takes the height suddenly with patches of wheat green, tawn
grey &
yellow-green, you about you, with what purples & purple-
greys beside you.
There is a certain sociability of
clouds when the horizon seems lower than we are. Thus to a
ruined villa with a
church-like barn.
Ezra Pound,
Walking Tour in Southern France, New Directions Books, 1992, 11.
