Little Testament

My aunt swears Santa Rosalia died alone and chaste 
in a cave on Mt. Pellegrino, that this is why 
    the water fizzles like a forgotten bride. 
She swears Santa Rosalia's spirit returned 400 years later, 
in a time of plague, when men went down like rubber dogs 
and the women said, There goes another Christ, 
    not even time to resurrect. 
I love the legends of girls who get what they want 
even if they have to be buried alive for it. Here, 
where I am student to all I survey—a Fabergé egg, 
the Vucciria market down the street, 100 naked bulbs 
swaying at noon, the sidewalk wet with ice and fish guts. 
Here, where a gang of Sicilians ran through the streets 
at Vespers in 1282, slitting the throats of Frenchmen 
    who couldn't say ciciri: chickpeas. 
Tonight, a man juggles blood oranges, adds more and more, 
then makes them disappear into this jacket. I know 
the mainland still doesn't give a shit about the island's 
African wind. I've asked the parched hammock, 
which has lost its terrazzo. I've asked my aunt 
who believes in a world expressionless as cuttlefish, 
where the baying of a dog at dusk means mala notizia 
    and only virgins go to heaven. 
I've asked my aunt who waits as a wife waits, 
with one ear to the ground, for the future 
to arrive like armies in epic poems. And how bright the fields look, 
how innocent, stuffed with all those unnamable flowers 
    that last second before they're trampled.