Seppi's Hang

 

Sankt Margarethen, on the south-western slopes of the Buchkogel, on 430 m.

To the left: Lebring, behind us: the beautiful old chapel, rebuilt in 1794.

 

Far ahead, invisible through the fog, the poplar-rimmed crests of Kitzek, and

to the right the steep ascent to the ‘greit’, the grassland, and patches of forest.

 

Before us: the land that Seppi’s father used to till,

but has now been rented out. Corncrops grow here in summer.

 

It is all maize, and a little maize, and I think maybe some maize too.

Three times a year there’s a little man in a big machine that goes ‘beep-beep’.

 

The giant machine comes to plant regiments of soldier-plants in spring,

then in autumn it comes to harvest, and then once more to plough.

 

‘Der Seppi’ knows every inch of this land; he and his sisters grew up here

among the cows and the pigs and the apples and the vines and the plums.

 

No time for that now, there is work to be done! But the apple trees are kept,

and the orchard behind the big farmhouse is full of unharvested fruit.