Earth, stone, water

After Graham Kershaw

I: Gravel road, Pisticci to Craco

A boot-trodden path cuts through wheat fields

to the remnants of a farmhouse. A chimney

standing sentinel takes on the proportions of a belltower;

an archway cut into loose brickwork forms

a nave. What’s left of the kitchen hearth,

now a tip for broken bowls, coat hangers,

shards of glass. A clean slab of granite

might’ve once formed a kitchen bench—

propped up with bricks, a kind of altar.

Here the hills erode to barren dunes

where only tufts grow, roads wedged

on the backs of ravines: a pilgrim’s landscape

through which the Apostle Thomas might have travelled.

A well, ploughed deeper in a drought year,

has gone to clay, a silent protest against the profane.

In the distance, Pisticci, perched above a drop,

its houses whitewashed and symmetrical;

the town’s water tower glints in the afternoon light,

its reservoir full, waiting for a slide to spill its barrel.

II: West of San Costantino Albanese

Beside a spring, a shrine appears in the forest clearing.

Built from felled logs, tended with urns of plastic roses.

A porcelain Mary rests on a mat of lace curtain,

draped with a rosary’s loops; a mirror behind her

reflects the forest green.

A votive candle, an incense jar, a dust covered

manger figurine—these are the gifts of devotion.

On a printed sheet, the startled photograph

of a farmer who disappeared two years before,

and this description:

one-and-a-half metres tall, wearing

a burgundy polo sweater and hiking boots,

he smoked Diana Blues.

III: Sanctuary of the Madonna of Monte Saraceno

Perched atop an outcrop of white rock, a beacon

for shepherds and foresters above the forest ceiling.

A journey once made from Calvello on foot or mule,

passing streams that feed roadside fonts

to sate the thirst of pilgrims; places where

a saint shed tears and where toothaches

and ulcerated feet can be cured.

The path uphill is marked by the stations,

simple plinths of concrete and bronze, adorned

with river-worn stones. The faithful

circle the perimeter three times before entering,

achieving a kind of transcendence. Inside,

a simulacrum of the Lady, caged in glass and wood,

waits to be carried downslope by men

locked shoulder to arm—

her annual sheltering from the winter chill.

IV: At Laurenzana

A man reclining on a low stone wall recounts

the allied landing at Salerno like it happened a week ago;

how the mountains crawled with soldiers.

In these mountains a thousand years is like yesterday

and the memory of yesterday erased.

Pointing to the church on a spur, he tells me how

archaeologists who excavated the abbey floor

found a woman’s mummified corpse—

he stretches his arms to indicate a crucifix.

At Santa Maria della Assunta a young priest

points at his watch: the abbey closed at midday.

No, he shakes his head, there was no woman found

in the shape of Jesus; found here were medallions,

a bronze plate with a Madonna and child,

the remains of rosary beads, a fragment of animal jaw,

Bourbon-era coins, buttons—many of them, of wood and bronze,

a pair of women’s leather shoes in perfect state of preservation,

the remains of a woollen blanket that swathed a newborn infant,

and a woman’s corpse, hands folded across her solar plexus.

V: The Madonna of Idris

Inside the cave church, small chips are cut

into the frescoes of St Girolamo and St John

and into the faces of the Madonna and Child,

the ground impressed with footprints.

The attendant explains it’s the humidity that inflicts

this damage, the fate of all soft tufa

and of a shrine that takes its name from water.

The baptismal font cut from rock casts a reminder.

The Virgin painted with milk and egg whites

has small chips of stone removed, pieces missing

from her hands and breasts, small keepsakes for believers,

mementos of having touched something holy.