entices me into its very soul
with a young woman who seems
to have lost all innocence
displaying a dead bird with her worker's hands,
messenger of the gods, a crow,
they used to kill the messenger, you know.
The birch trees behind are painted
not from reality but as if a dream
their leaves mirroring the villager's hair,
the bodies of crows strewn
like corpses on a battlefield.
There is disdain and sadness on her face,
no hint of joy...in this awful place.