Seen from this high cutting the sky drifts white linen over dance floors of water either side the shady creek that trickles down country lagoons gummed with water fern saucepans of wet money brass polyester gold couch grass black with swamp lily dams backed up gullies and parallel in paspalum old tillages that fed barns no one grows patch crops now slow-walking black cattle circle up off cleared flats past pastel new brick houses and higher charcoal-barrelled hills are fields of a war five centuries Western jihad though it was first called the Thirty Years War buff coats and ships’…