The swarthy plumber who sets a time
to fix the taps never comes. Water
drips in nearby limestone caves
with less regularity from stalactites.
Church bells clang, now in a frenzy,
then once only and, much later, once again –
shuttered solitude now in silent streets
during the heat of the afternoon. In the shade,
on dusty ground, thin cats yawn.
Hibiscuses expose their sexy throats.
Should the plumber come, after
a siesta’s done, he’ll likely find
no-one home. He may later phone.
The sun shines hard on a limestone landscape
from which, block by sawn block,
the villages have risen as did – but how? –
megaliths during the Neolithic.
There’s no division of colour, honeyed,
between what’s man-made and the land –
the villages often atop the coralline-
capped mesa-like formations.
They look down on tiers of ancient cultivation.
Olive lizards spurt in and out
of the drystone walls – a species
endemic to the island after the sea
gushed into the Mediterranean basin
with cataclysmic swiftness.
The Romans called the landfall Gaulus.
Its stratified cliffs are the Miocene
made scenic. Marine fossils
in a fanned museum line up
under glass, put a contemporary shine
on geologic time; another case displays ancient bones.
Perhaps of a distant, distant forebear
of the plumber who, in this farrago,
shrugs off haste, short north of the cliffs.