8. In Sicily: Fragments Of Fragments (18a/b, 19-24)

...flying through thick cloud,
a menagerie of impressions
begins to gather, and scatter;
dim, vague outlines, 
later filled in
with detail from the ground.
My first sight of Sicily,
soaring over Mt. Etna 
without catching sight 
of this breathing presence 
beneath the clouds,
seeing little villages,
dry river courses radiating
about this palpable absence...

...like the uniqueness 
of a flowing river
a poem begins and ends;
constrained by the page,
the covers of a book,
a series of volumes,
hours of wakefulness.
In a borrowed watercourse
it carves out its passage
to the waiting sea, or lake,
or the sinking sands 
of an empty desert.
In an adaptation of tradition
this appropriation
has no true boundaries
leaving the poetic text
without a true beginning,
without an absolute ending...

...like waves beaching themselves 
on the surface of the ocean
we should find poems within poems,
poems without poems,
lines between lines,
essential distillations
of experience re-produced,
re-interpreted interpretations
set loose on a sea of words...

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1. Catania (19)

...the hydrofoil slows,
a cabin full of bored smokers
and hapless passive smokers
prepare to refresh themselves.
A brisk sea-breeze can be seen,
alas, as it ripples across
the semi-circular harbour.
The city of Catania,
sanitized through distance,
looks like a scene by Canaletto,
its baroque churches and domed
duomo point to, and inspire,
the center of this once 
earth shattered town
now faded a limestone black;
as drear and dusty as an opencast
quarry full of cheap and dingy coal.
Not without hope, though, 
for a few majestic baroque facades, 
hiding their lower ceilings,
prepare for a face lift,
a stone mason's surgery
and a wash that scours and scrubs
the grime of centuries
leaving the rest of the town 
looking the worst for wear,
its basalt cobbled pavements
reinforcing this notion
of a dark, sinful town...

...my room is not yet ready
and so in the nearby 
Bellini gardens wait.
An oasis of real grass
well watered with weathered
statues of kids watching
mums watching their children
watching gulls snatching scraps.
Can a relationship have 
a simple beginning, 
have a simple end? 
On an ornate stone bench 
sits a parting couple,
he looks the other way
almost in tears,
she demurely downcast
undeterred by such inclemency.
O naughty, naughty young man
what crimes of passion
have now been found out?
Did you flirt somewhere else,
or worse, or just forget 
some simple token of your 
now refound affection?
He gets up and over the railing
on the summit of a small hill
overlooking the distant vista of Etna;
fuming amid its bevy of clouds,
the youth sheds quietly 
the softest of bitter tears.
Ten minutes drip away,
on the ledge he then rolls 
some tobacco and takes 
a now needed smoker's break,
his lady friend patiently
waiting, still unforgiving.
He returns, says a few words,
endures a few drawn out moments 
of final agony, that, at last, 
crack this feminine block of stone.
They hold hands, look long and hard
into each others eyes, 
their lips meet slowly,
in an impassioned embrace
he then places his arms around her
in this finely chiselled drama;
immortalized in living marble;
elderly folk in the shade,
with hidden handkerchiefs,
gently nodding...

...all about one can see the city
is in the midst of a garbage strike.
"So what's new?" you might well ask,
as concerned citizens fire bomb 
one more mountainous pile 
of rotting rubbish,
sirens sounding, signalling 
one more fiery protest,
sending notice to those who 
have already protested too much...

...high
above this city,
in the freezing cold,
sits Etna with a warm glow,
streams of excitement bubbling 
forth from time to time, re-touching
this landscape waiting patiently below.
Frothy scorias burnt a thousand hues re-title
the odd orchard or olive grove, petrifying those
stone faced inhabitants 
			 	 lost in the path 
					          of the latest 
								      lava flow...

...Etna has touched this city.
One buried amphitheatre sits
half exposed, its once gleaming 
white marbles, stolen,
now faded a soot encrusted ashen grey
on the triumphant churches all about
decorated inside with an exuberance
of baroque trifles.
One unfinished monster of a church,
pillars with capitals decapitated,
its floor crumbling 
beneath the shoddy feet
of its long departed workmen,
its organ now only a shell
like its builder buried nearby;
a crafted mind-set,
a civilization supported, 
paid for by a population
long lost to us in those 
most terrible of European wars...

...the busiest market meets
beneath the steps of one more church.
Inside, the ladies pray
and, down the side aisle
up near the front, play 
with flowers and tinsel
before a gigantic cosmic globe
on wheels, lit up, shimmering
with a silvery sheen,
the Virgin Mary all in white
standing rocket-like on top
ready for her next festive day.
Outside, in the heat and flies,
the market is in full swing.
Wonderful fruits and vegetables
make enticing bargains
for the back packers
if they were to know 
they should stray this way...

...help, I hear myself saying,
and repeating, where is the bin
for rubbish, where to put 
this still juicy peach stone?
Years of training, brain-washing
come home to roost.
On the ground of course
along with all the other muck,
slyly added to by 
my still guilty self...

...help! Where is the toilet?
Must I pay, six sheets of paper
carefully counted out,
as precious as the luke warm water
metered out in the showers,
like the pocket towels
the pensionnes are forced 
by law to lend you..?

...help! How do you cross 
this simple busy square,
a circuit of chariots
charges down upon you
with the precision 
of a surgeon without a care?
Find the gaps and go for it!
And praise those drivers 
who do not spear you...

...help! Where is the bus station,
which bus leaves from where,
what spot on the gravel 
sees me leaving for Agrigento..?

2. Agrigento (20)

...dishevelled concrete flats
line the route,
an empty Sunday square 
indicates the regional bus station,
long viaducts cart the traffic
up and down this hill,
have lined the pockets
of the local Mafia 
so thoughtfully posing,
so constructively posing
as construction companies...

...the old city perches 
on the steep sides of this peak,
the Norman duomo ensconced
on the highest edge,
the main street narrowly
winding upwards in 
this scheme of things.
Not too far away find
a simple church called 
Santa Maria dei Grechi,
was once perhaps a temple
dedicated to that temptress 
Athena, daughter of Venus?
Alas, through the locked 
iron grille, admire 
a simple avenue of cypress.
How frustrating I find
my not being able to visit,
such prayers instantly answered, 
the bush telegraph here 
being what it is, 
has an old lady presenting 
a monstrous key
on an iron circle and chain.
The arch is Byzantine,
its key stone is Norman,
the murals are from long ago,
its pillars perhaps recycled roman,
its larger foundations Greek.
In a tunnel down one side
can now re-visit the stylobate,
finding nothing is ever lost,
the trace always an image of itself,
recycled, changing in space, yet
re-presenting the same old face...

...the next day visit the 
the Valley of Temples.
A fallen image of a giant 
lies on the ground re-figured,
find hope filled funeral chambers 
now completely emptied,
shattered stone foundations 
and crooked walls wait 
like an unfinished jigsaw puzzle, 
a few columns re-erected, 
only tokens of tokens,
re-echoed in temples 
more or less intact
without roofs, all roped off,
pale and colourless,
their once gaily painted 
complexions now lost to us.
A long road winds up past each one
and in the last, inside, unseen,
break some simple olive bread,
sample a local cheese
and slake a thirst with fruit juice
admiring a view still found 
so awe inspiring...

3. Selinunte (21)

...no buses on a Sunday
so take the train instead to Selinunte
via Palermo, the last few kilometres
having to hitch in order to get there
before the sunset beats me...

...large temples, some in outline
left intact, others more naturally
left in mounds, but why placed 
far outside the walls of this city?
A civic space laid out 
between two marshy rivers
with ever thickening walls,
that were finally left wasted,
above two token harbours 
that must have silted up
even before their commission...

...on a narrow wooden bridge,
across a rippling brook
swaying with water weed, 
on now blistered feet,
visit the sanctuaries of lesser gods.
Mud huts for images turned
themselves into stone abodes
with all the latest trimmings,
some pillars, a lovely portal,
evidence of a well cut window,
simples signs that attest
the power of the gods to heal,
answer all manner of petitions;
prayer filled needs still heard,
still met in the local church...

...where to sleep the night,
how much further do I have to walk,
as I hobbled along the road
my weary head now 
filled with such thought?
My simple desires suddenly took shape
in the form of an angel
dressed in white speaking French
on the back of a motor bike 
asking me if I would like to stay 
at his mother's place 
just along the road?
He picked me up and took me home
and left me there, by myself,
the cheapest and best accommodation
I was ever to entertain 
in all my travels through
these diverse lands called Italie...

4. Segesta (22)

...took the Monday morning bus 
with the workers and then two trains
to Segesta, alighting, 
with one other backpacker,
on the concourse of its 
magnificent railway station
now inhabited by nests of birds
and passing tramps 
in upstairs quarters...

...limping along like a snail 
carrying its bulky home on its back,
and getting no where fast
a local tourist on us took pity
and transported us up the road
to this unfinished temple;
an intact shell without a roof.
Wooden walking boards taking us 
up these block-like steps 
and through these proud pillars 
erected in civic pride 
swollen with recycled gold 
that aroused too much envy, 
mere pawns in a powerful political 
game of deadly chess, a game 
that left them in the middle 
to be ground down and taken away
and sold into slavery...

...one more lift takes me up
even higher, up a steep hill
that once was walled and mighty,
majestic in its disposition.
Now little remains except 
some sifting archaeologists
under canvass, a few rows of stone
and one wonderful theatre,
its backdrop a stunning vista
with an ancient sacred cave 
built into one lower corner.
Seated, I wondered what drama 
played itself out here,
what final scenes engulfed
an audience who had seen it 
all before, forever crossing 
that divide between 
art and reality...

5. Palermo (23)

...back to the more modern world,
or, one world more left in limbo.
Palermo, like a rejected pearl
left sadly neglected, stranded 
on the shores of a beautiful blue bay 
awash with the strangled dreams 
of its citizens bled white,
dissipated by the machinations
of sinister forces manipulated,
locked in political struggles 
beyond their control.
A necklace of aspirations,
beads of sweat longing for
the material signs of 
middle-class fulfilment;
an accumulation of entities
with both style and substance...

...to catch a bus in this city
you must watch the population
practicing this arcane art,
the modest bus signs taking many shapes
like needles in a burnt black haystack.
Long, narrow streets pointing out of town,
near the station proud rows of palazzi,
with dusty courtyards and crooked doors,
recount happier times;
now businesses or pensionnes.
Ornate churches opening and shutting 
in tune with mysterious time-tables
like tidal clams displaying 
wonderful painted treasures 
indicating the gifts of patronage 
of a more prosperous clime,
periods of political power
centered in this dark mushroom 
of a town marginalized in 
the decaying inertia of the present...

...and of days to come,
like pigeons in the square,
in the soft gentle breeze 
a breath of fresh air
that is starting to ruffle 
a few untidy feathers,
a collective voice 
that protests in silence
whose murmurs are now just 
beginning to be heard..?

...a wonderful museum re-awakens 
the past, included in the charge
a fine booklet also on display
imaging major pieces in prominent places.
Sets of sculptures from Greek temples
find themselves once more 
re-simulated together.
In the reflection on the glass
see reflected the same faces
I then see through such protected cases.
See artefacts from archaeological sites 
I have just visited these last few days,
scenes now enriched with these finds
leaving me quite transported...

...Pagan-Christians with an Islamic veneer,
or, Pagan-Moslems with a Christian gloss?
Red roofed mosques converted into churches,
shimmering mosaics on gold ceilings reliving 
the intrigues of a courtly Byzantine splendour,
the depiction of figures in paintings 
before candles representing holy persons, 
sacred personas masked behind the manipulated 
application of glowing paint radiant 
in the shiny flesh of skin tones, 
flickering eyes that follow...

...behind high walls an ancient garden wanders
from one small courtyard to another,
the scented fragrance of ripening citrus 
waiting there within one's reach giving 
this Moorish world a timeless air,
now a monastic garden freely open
to a respectful public seeking peace, 
and the serenity of a reconciled tranquillity...

...through the city streets awash 
with pouring rain visited
the Convento dei Cappuccini.
Inside, in the dark quietness 
of its thick walls, an ancient friar 
greeted me dressed in brown
behind a desk with a sign that said,
in three of four languages, 
entry by donation kindly requested. 
An outstretched hand, thin and skeletal,
pointed out this expectation 
in no uncertain terms, in life 
it seemed it was this one person's 
holy mission, preparing me with 
an unintended intimation of what, 
for all people, was about to come.
Inside, four long passageways
intersected to form a square
around some invisible courtyard.
The walls were whitewashed, blandly
dispelling the gloom; inhabiting 
their entire length, like dusty bags 
of dehydrated potatoes, hung 
the desiccated bodies of the dead 
stacked in vertical sacks
all dressed in their Sunday best.
Gentlemen in sombre suits and ties,
women in frocks and tops, children
outfitted in an assortment of gear,
each specimen duly catalogued with labels
that bore the faded date of their demise.
A moving chronicle of those times,
somewhere between the 1830's and 1840's.
Rows and rows of upright folk congregated,
waiting for those final days already 
upon them, flesh turning to dust,
material looking the worst for wear, their 
sackcloth habits ready to be torn asunder.
Bishops and priests given a more fitting
entombment, a narrow horizontal shelf,
or, a marble hole in the floor memorialized.
Promotion, possessions, social status
and power now hardly seem worth the effort, 
an object lesson written on these walls 
of this charnel house in lifesize figures 
for all to read, for all to see.
Through a door in an open room find
drying out on a well drained metal bench
one more body of an age, or time, 
I could not discern, perhaps one 
of those brothers, now diminishing in number, 
waiting patiently for his reward,
soon to encounter immortality on a nearby wall
through this morbid tagging of the corpse
through the graffiti of its own name.
Distant echoes reminding me that 
I have not been completely left alone, 
for unseen, around the corner, a few more 
tourists stand before these tokens 
of things to come to stare and wonder, 
recollect, reflect, formulate 
a more appropriate sense of perspective...

...in one very public square
I found an impressive sacred circle
replicated in marble.
There standing, and seated,
in youthful, elegant repose 
were sculptures cast in a naked riot 
of erotically coded rhetoric,
nearly too much for 
the dismissive locals
who had loudly whispered 
for its instant removal.
The tall centerpiece of a fountain 
dripped seductively
in narrow, staggered drops,
these waters recycled
and returned back against 
that central, phallic shaft 
in single, individualized jets
over the upper pool
around its enlarged base,
to be then poured into 
the waiting receptacles
of semi-circular lower basins.
An artwork enfenced in stone
and then framed again, once more, 
by a low, metal balustrade
with its wrought iron gates
officially kept locked.
A piece of theatre in the round
too powerful to participate in,
to parade upon its steps, 
to promenade upon its circular balconies,
to promote a closer encounter
with an open assortment 
of prominent genitalia 
more or less interposed 
and presented at eye-level.
Mingle we might in thought
but not in fact within this 
dis-inhibited disarray 
of classical figures filled with youth
locked in longing glances,
in longed for embraces,
constructed in a brazen 
and deconstructive stance,
instructing a public with an attitude
barely thought about,
subliminally suggested 
through a repressed world of feelings,
emotions re-simulated through 
the cold imitation of flesh.
Personified symbols romantically
laughing at the thought 
that there could be a need 
for formal marriage,
mocking the mere suggestion
that one might be arranged,
let alone the concept
that one could even be arranged..!

...in the early evening take a bus to Monreale,
visit the cathedral and view its golden ceilings,
mosaic visions of the saints and scenes
vividly recalled from the Old and New Testaments.
But no version of reality can escape the past,
incorporated in this architectural feast is 
a monastic transformation of an Islamic courtyard 
with its forested arcade of individualized pillars.
This whole region overlaid, reduplicated
with repeated themes in eternal variations,
grounded with living roots firmly enmeshed
in the rhythms and burdens of a recycled past...

6. Syracuse (24)

...the sun beats down 
on a sintered landscape,
in the dusty trails of 
miniature motor bikes 
visit Syracuse on foot.
With a wink one young fellow
offers me the hint of a lift 
with an angelic smile,
without speaking one word 
of this kind invitation, 
such words being wasted, 
thoughts passing simultaneously 
from head to head.
I nod my thanks,
signal such recognition,
need not accept this offer, alas,
having just reached 
the object of my destination...

...an old compressed town
on an island peninsular,
built up layer upon layer,
a shrivelled vestige,
a faded fragment 
of its former importance
now expanding into the present,
slowly coming back to life,
waiting for tourists
to revitalize a vaguely 
redefined future...

...a temple there, a forum here,
an almighty altar over there 
(the biggest in antiquity),
an oval hippodrome;
roman by period,
a Greek theatre marred with 
a wooden stage; workmen
busy with modern scenery
in the form of lighting
and other props for sound.
A sunken theatrette
in the whitest of marble
with a pit under water,
strange grottos with
stories savage and bizarre,
a fresh water pool, with reeds,
bubbling up beside the sea
beneath the stone walls of this 
once proud and richly endowed city...

...in the distant haze on the harbour
the fishing boats transform themselves
into galleys rowed by slaves at war;
a state under siege, left to the energy
of more raw and heroic elements, a fate 
that always finds a point of no return, 
the collapse of political power, and fortune,
the disintegration of national unity 
from the seeds of inevitable decay 
sown and scattered within...

...in the cathedral, blending old and new,
discover two rows of pillars from the past,
Doric in form, worn and battered in age,
solidly set into the walls of this church,
finally moulded with a baroque countenance,
seeing out the centuries with layers 
of fashion piled on top of each other.
Find the multi-faceted psyche of these 
ancient inhabitants like rough diamonds,
under the uninhibited heat of the sun
a dry encrusted sweat twinkling 
on their dark, well tanned, southern faces...

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...and now it is time 
to say a sad farewell 
to this Sicily 
filled with fond love 
and yet tinged with a dash 
of organized hatefulness.
Through the clouds, 
flying back to Rome,
revisit the beach at Selinunte 
spread out some miles below,
(now days only returned to
from time to time 
as a fading memory).
The passing clouds,
take on human shapes,
then accumulate as a crowd
blocking out these sea-shell coasts
along the northern edge.
Mt Etna, still lost in a shroud
of its own making,
linking the underworld
with the celestial over-world;
these heavens sprinkled with stars
and scattered myths;
a pregnant moon shinning kindly 
on a setting sun...

...a fleeting passage in time
flying moment by moment,
enduring, without a beginning
and without an ending,
fragments of fragments
reconstituted in a text,
the resurrection of meaning
from pieces that have no meaning,
sounds made from silences,
codes re-encoded and broken,
between these dreams and reality
who could know the difference
when in essence there can be none...

...bits and pieces make a home
for one more poem unbegun,
without an ending,
recycled, a play on words
within a play on words, 
only a token promise
of a promised token,
shattered fragments
once more remade 
and then, once more, 
re-broken...