Una Favola
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Quali volti nell’aria?
Pirati o mercanti, maghi o scienziati
con formule e amuleti scendono sulla riva?
Quale incantesimo ferma a Mozia
il fluire del tempo?
Forse un vento del Libano
senza memoria ridesta visioni
di un sogno d’Oriente.
Nel Tofet bruciano incenso e timo.
Tanit splende con vesti di porpora
e seni di lino.
Caste fanciulle danzano sulle brezze del mare.
Pan ha sepolto il passato con vigne, alberi e capre.
Nelle luci, nelle ombre tra vasi, anfore e steli
riaffiorano sempre canti orientali.
Oh tu,
feniceo o plebeo, che adagi i tuoi passi
nella piccola isola sospesa e sognante
in remoti millenni,
volgi il pensiero a Colei, fanciulla,
che forse bruciò per te in sacrificio a Tanit.
- Vittorio Cimiotta
“Don’t go to Mozia looking for answers,” my Sicilian friend advised, “You’ll only find more questions. But by all means, go.” Those were her parting comments to me as we hugged goodbye. It would be a world far from the hazy blur of Vinitaly. But it was a must see.
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Looking back now, the only lightness on this visit would be with the wine.
Flying over the country in the late afternoon, in a small plane, as one approaches the island, the handiwork of the Phoenicians is still evident. At the South gate was the Cothon, a small rectangular harbor with an outlet to the great sea. At the North gate, the ancient causeway over the water from Mozia to Sicily still remains.
On landing in Marsala, the way to Mozia was hindered by haze over a waxing moon. “Walk to Mozia,” was the suggestion. Fortunately the tide was low, this being the Mediterranean, which had long been banished of any emotional swells. The humans were in complete control of those urges.
Now it is empty and solemn, an urn for the lives of those who struggled for their daily bread thousand of years ago.
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Yes, it is a dark jungle, but womblike. A sense of shelter, of safety, of illusion.
The rhythm between ancient and present is hard to grasp, this island has its own magnetism, drawn from a core other than the earth. Perhaps it is the
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Unlash me from the mast. I must probe the abyss.
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written as a "memento from the future" by Alfonso Cevola limited rights reserved On the Wine Trail in Italy