“He who come from the sea comes to rob.”
Mastery rolls in
unrelenting as the tideless waves:
always someone else’s coast.
Safe harbour once for Carthage,
before Rome planted its grain;
later Mussolini mined
the coal and discontent;
now NATO play their war games here.
This island’s had its usage.
Time piles up in layers:
we look and tread on history
quarried and laid out in stone.
Everywhere rotund remains
mark the Nuraghi’s slow retreat
to Barbagia, the unyielding highlands.
As a snail withdraws into its shell,
so malaria , serfdom, wealth were left behind.
In Arborea, last of the guidicati,
Eleanor codified laws
to endure five hundred years.
Unlike her realm’s resistance,
broken at bloody Sanluri.
Yet your falcon bears her name still.
And free as flight above
is the pretty deceit of a snorkel:
that one swims with fishes.
In their liquid valleys, mountains, forests,
all is crystal definition.
Our tourist vista, framed
by oleander, juniper and myrtle,
seldom has such depth of focus.
vii.2008 (revised vi.2015)
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