Les Sangliers

Once, we were coming back

From a  fête votive in Goudargues

When, sticky with pink barbe à papa,

And queasy because

The hairpinning road through St Marcel de Careiret

Resembled the crazy-maze passage of our caroming bumper car,

We were met by a stream of sangliers — 

Wild boars — 

Dashing across the D9 near the Forêt de Cavillargues.

They pelted in a single ribbon, as I recall,

So how could we even tell what they were,

How distinguish that ruche of  shadow and wind

From any other ghost of  the district?

That year I came across

A theory about the suffix –argues

That trails behind village names all around here.

(Vallérargues, St André d’Olérargues, Goussargues, Foussargues.)

It may refer to an area of  land

Given to Roman soldiers after service in North Africa

By the praetor in Nîmes.

Cavillargues. The acres of Cavillus, perhaps.

The hairy pigs had emigrated, perhaps from the Caucasus,

And no doubt had settled the Val de Tave long before Cavillus

Arrived to begin gentrification.

He wandered from the marble steps of the Maison Carrée,

Perhaps having paid obeisance to Roman gods and governors,

Perhaps uncertain from an encounter with the local plonk,

And les sangliers came out to give him a thrill,

And to tell him

that this is not yet the Forêt de Cavillargues

you can’t run through it as if you were a ground-level mistral

with your feet like bound clumps of asparagus

and your eyes on the Perseid meteor showers