To La Serena What Severe and Brown Earth, Sun-Soaked, Barren, Poor, and Torn by a Thousand Stone Needles. Softened by Pastures W
To La Serena What severe and brown earth, sun-soaked, barren, poor, and torn by a thousand stone needles. Softened by pastures where the bells lend their voice to the sheep. Earth watched over by castles already void, of dry battlements, lichen and wild-fig covered, silent witness of the passage of time. Naked earth of trees and undergrowth, of mountain crags, dark and ashen, of a dying greyish green cut out against the sky like a Chinese shadow. And however, so beautiful. In spring the breeze carries the scent of labdanum and heath to the plain, and the rosemary prays to its god, the Sun, giving to the air a magic aura of sanctity, as if bathing it in incense. Winter sows the earth with torrents, ponds, streams leaping and sparkling, their banks carpeted with the tiniest flowers whose names only botanists know. Spring dries the soul of La Serena and shrouds it with flowers, crowning it with beauty, then to clothe it in fields of golden hay combed by the east wind in summer. Everything in La Serena is ephemeral, as a lily petal left on the altar, as the winged soul of a butterfly, as the tears of a child. Only the holm oak, brown like earth, remain in time, year after year, standing, silent, with their gray trunks, their hardy leaves, their gnarled strong and haggard branches. 305 306 Generalities 307 308 Generalities 1. INTRODUCTION Following the 1996 Cork (Ireland) Declaration “ A Living Rural Environment ”, rural development has become a key cross-sectoral goal of a major part of European Com - munity policies.
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