Concrete Images of Sicily
A bit of cement and loads of sand
plus rivers of sweat = a house, villa,
apartment block, another hard storey.
Most get finished eventually, but not
before the elements collude to under-
mine. Sea, salt, wind, sun.
Nature supplies raw material
then comes the spiteful tempesta.
Reinforce concrete with rebar but
still small cracks let in rain and just
enough collapses to expose your
determination for the flawed thing it is.
Objective forever;
a decade or two achieved.
Not like early churches of stone,
marble temples of pagan Greeks
who came, shared their DNA,
built what even outlasted their gods
and retreated homeward to wallow
in debt or wealth and history.
Tourists come to see what used to be,
the empty, ancient mountain villages.
In August, they lie on the beach,
get the tan that tells their friends
they holidayed somewhere, rented
spare rooms made of concrete.
There's money in beds and bad
breakfasts, euros for christenings
at least till the tourists get bored
because interiors start to look
more IKEA than Mediterranean.
A funeral procession stops traffic,
momentarily. Somebody is being
driven at great expense to that hill
above town where the concrete coffin,
made locally, will slide into a concrete
hole in a hive of holiness. Concrete city
of the dead, who require fresh flowers
and perhaps a small electric light so
those left can display their devotion.
Deaths, births, weddings, baptisms–
the cement that binds individual grains.
Mount Etna, just down the road,
spews its lava which becomes sand
and concrete curbing, gate posts, statues
of Padre Pio, Jesus' Mum, or a beatific
lamb before the slaughter. The pagans,
Jews and Moslems left other things behind,
some that survived the elements, Roman
Catholicism, the developers' bulldozers.
Concrete new marries the old, so there's
reluctance to sell what's beyond repair.
The great-grandparents' dead eyes stare
from those plastic-framed photos
at the end of their coffins and family
in North America or Australia may
throw a few dollars to insure nothing
is forfeit because property is holy.
The Chinese may now make and sell
almost everything, but those tomatoes
from the garden plot behind the stone
and concrete ruin taste so much better
than shiny ones from the supermarcato.
Author: Allan Lake
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