After Pasolini

I
A sultry haze rises
Across the Fish Market
Stalls mid-morning

If the sun can be
Enjoyed or feared
Here it is both

Dreams of unseen depths
Weary awnings
Beg to differ

II
The olive vendor sleeps
In a small whitewashed
Windowless shack that
Has curtains for doors

Friends with the ragman
Coming from some other
Slum they are
On intimate terms

Both keep a dusty
Merchandise that looks
Like stolen goods

And their cruelty

Increases the hardness
Of their faces
As their hunger

III
Catania, your uneven squares
Make me dizzy
But I too would like
To avoid earthquakes
Not always lucky
In this regard

An earthquake or two
Between friends
May of course be welcomed
But in my future
I will walk with a tilt
So as to avoid my worst fate

IV
As in a film by Pasolini it
Is early afternoon down
By the city’s main bridge

Several youths strip to
Their waists and hurl
Themselves in with abandon

In this moment, there is peace
In the refusal of constraint

Later, at the Fish Market
A fist fight breaks out
In the three o’clock heat

There is peace in this also
In the humanity of gratuitous revolt

V
The light motorbikes
Make a dinny whir
Turning into the cobbled
Narrow streets of Catania’s
Old Town the worn
Brakes screeching as if
In conversation with each
Other as us humans
Listen on intently
Desperate for clues to
Life’s oblique mysteries

VI
To transfigure
Is to organise
For our goal
Is not just beauty

Though beauty
Is also a vision
In this case it
Keeps finding itself

In unusual places
Amongst different peoples

So, beautiful ones
Let us be judged by examples
And by our struggles

VII
These ancient walls
Throb again this near-summer
With Banksy slogans and
The blinding sunlight suggests
We must start again and that
Ex nihilo there is a hope
That a life collapsed in ruins
Is also a tabula rasa

Young man, in this Italian
May which now rises
Up with the historical dust
Of the historical past and
Makes you choke write anew
On the walls with a scrawl
That draws a fragile future
On illuminated concrete