Sicily, May 2011
— 1. Palermo —
The way to the catacombs
is swollen with idols
whose pale, outpouring faces
never meet my gaze.
My particular guilt at cannoli, watching
as children play with collapse;
“Han ammazzato Osama bin Laden,”
murmurs the barista,
“ma non ci credo.”
— 2. Enna —
Petrified wave replaces horizon;
the bus a felucca, climbing and cresting,
and tipping down the face.
The hill town plays back captured light,
distant lightning beneath dried-tobacco clouds.
In angular field and espaliered vine,
in cutting road and flattening rise,
the labour of a million hands meets
the end of a million years.
— 3. Messina —
The shoulder of second Sicily
plunges into shattered sea;
through halls of reconstructed jars
I watch from the other shore.
Searching for ancient Zancle
I find just Messinese earthquake
as trams slide by and sound false bells.
Years too late, I learned the strait
was home to Scylla and her mate.
— 4. Agrigento —
A piercing shard of the iron core,
molten in the setting sun;
pathways, scored across its face,
trickle from the city’s peak.
Astride the city, the duomo,
and below it temples in ruin,
and lower still the ancestral sea.
A boy white-robed and bearing
a processional cross approaches,
and his small voice follows behind:
“cosa cerca Lei?”
— 5. Trapani —
The queue for the flight
curves towards the gate,
all faces to the angular fighter
as it takes itself away.
From Trapani to Tripoli,
from spring to midwinter,
war, old and newly born, celebrates
the marriage of salt and flame.
