They built it for the oranges,
Bulging with sun,
Dripping from the trees;
Small plots, tessellating up
The stony slopes
Tangy with lavender and thyme
Bright globes of colour,
Between the scrub olive
And holm oak drabs.
Ambling from the City,
Cars and carts clatter
Away, avoiding
The unblinking eyes
And plague bell, tolling;
Over the dust-bowl plain
Desiccated sleepers
Grip Spanish steel tight –
The wooden train
Grumbles its way slowly up
Under sparking gantry.
Breathless,
The escarpment squeezes in
And, as it does, remembered voices
Of tunnellers, wielding
Sweaty picks, barrows, chisels
Echoes through the cuttings; then
Darkness,
Before the bursting
Glare flares forth –
Down, over rock gardens,
Half-caught peeks at encircling peaks,
The shimmer of the azure port
And the orange-gold richly won.
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