Andrew Edwards is the co-author of Sicily: A Literary Guide for Travellers and is currently working on a similar guide to Andalucía. His articles have appeared in a variety of publications including Italy Magazine and The Florentine. He is also involved in the Times of Sicily online magazine project.
Additionally, Andrew is a translator who has translated two works by the Spanish journalist and author, Alejandro Luque – both set in Sicily. His poetry takes much inspiration from the island’s complex past and present.
The flint crag’s softened by tender spring flesh,
They bark not the dogs of sacred summer,
For fire will wait while flower still remains.
Tomasi’s hell is no Divine circle,
When island purity awakes the heath.
The cicada has no percussive stride
To drown the softer tones of Proserpine.
Botanical invaders shadow man,
Cristoforo brought more than silver wealth,
His spiteful friends sent to settle the realm
Where native petals fall at brutish feet,
And summer fulfills its thorn-ridden reign.
Sotto le stelle di Roccapalumba
The stars are bright in the heart of Texas,
Yet this leaden rock absorbs other pain
To project a future beyond feudal.
Sublime stellar immutability
Points the way for societal ills,
Even a Leopard recognised that truth.
The gutter never prevents clarity,
If uncertainties turn from blacker nights.
More than stars lift full blanket cover,
Revealing such fertile furrows to plough.
To look up is to look down magnified,
To see a land worthy of persuasion,
Unshackling history in the infinite.
The Country of Stars proclaims the signpost,
So easily said – well aren’t they all now,
Denying a future mapped out in white.
A Sonnet to Solunto
Mosaic blisters rent by solar bursts,
Lie wasted under sylvan brushwood scrub,
Siroccan gusts invent the airstream’s worst,
So selling history’s birth for men to snub.
The clothing woven tight belies the heat,
Sicilian pasts recaptured hide mere life,
Less complicated fashion more complete,
Whose rusty levers linger held by strife.
Siculo drum beats pierce my northern mind,
Their silken scars heal when knowingly left,
Unfound behind witless words almost blind,
Which crack the sun with platitudes bereft.
The classics live cry Steinbeck’s war worn hoard,
A bitter consolation still the sword.
Poetry in this post: © Andrew Edwards
Published with the permission of Andrew Edwards