Cappadocia

Cappadocia

A hard slog up the climbing roadway

Through the Toros mountains

Where sedimentary formations

Gash their way up in bold zig-zag patterns

Into the forbidding landscape

Yet dwarfed by volcanic cones

Whose igneous debris lies scattered

Like forgotten playthings

Among the canyons and valleys

Isolated boulders amongst the scrub

Sparse trees and shrubs

Struggle in the high, dry climate

Amongst the stones and tuff-pinnacles

The ground itself crumbling and flaking

Between high rock-hewn promontories

Riddled like cheese

With holes and caves

Church-studded once

With frescoes and carvings

Sheltering not only monks and acolytes

But also the poorest people

Who eked a living from this land

And in this colour-bleached region

Basalt and sandstone

Are engaged in unequal battle

Pitted against unrelenting elements

Of driving desert-like winds

Which sand-blast every feature

Into deceptively smooth roundnesses

Revealing little of the harshness

Of this high plateau

This land-locked steppe

Where strong light casts hard shadows

Of the many pigeons

Which flutter here undisturbed

Small creatures in a vast landscape

Copyright Andy Fawthrop 2013