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This poem is taken from PN Review 141, Volume 28 Number 1, September - October 2001.

Sicily Its Heart (translated by Erica Segre and Simon Carnell) Leonardo Sciascia

'... if it was worth two cents, we wouldn't have read it to the Bostonians.'
                                                                Poe

Sicily Its Heart

Like Chagall, I'd like to capture this land
in the still eye of an ox.
Not a carousel of images
or sunburst of nostalgia:
only these coagulated clouds,
the slowly descending crows -
and the burnt stubble, the bare trees,
filigreed against the sky.
A dark blurred mirror;
a destiny of rains: the summer far off
that stretched itself naked
and shimmered in the light:
absent the voices of the grape harvest,
announcing autumn.
...


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