In winter, Germans gone, the sea insane
explodes for miles and stutters, foam birds
down the stone. Back home, we prayed for this,
a cobbled street, the sand swept clean by storm,
always weather at us, lightning, sun,
and out there Sicily unseen, or rain
en route to where we stand, beside the ruin,
Saracen, where lookouts looked and waited
for the glint of a devoted mob.
The mongoloid cast out by family to beg,
the epileptic throwing seizures in the road,
church bells that won’t let you think,
rats and fleas, the cats who scrounge for food—
all unforeseen. Back home we hide what’s wrong.
The gong is soft except when rung for meals.
Here, far more than lovely lava caves
the sea gouged out, much more than crosses
on the mountain tops, the hands of women
cut by grass they pull and rope they weave
from grass, the hands and minds of man
gone stone from stone and sweat and little pay
are what we see and what we must believe.
And here we must believe the bombing spray,
the sea attenuated by the stone, squeezed in
until it screams relief and rockets to the moon
ahead of man. But also man, that Saracen
who stares forever in the boiling wind
beside his ruin, waiting for his day.