I have waited for this moment. A vanguard of balm crickets are prey to the panic, defeated, saying goodbye to the sun while on the gilded battleground stained of blood setting the curtain on the evening. It is an evening at the end of May filled with sweetness that envelops me in a musical silence on the coastal plateau. I lay myself down my head on my jacket. Behind me the sound of the sea is hidden in the rocks, a hundred steps ahead there is an exposed farm colored platinum from the rising half-moon. I try to regulate my breath to that of the rising waves. My anarchic heart beats instead to the rhythm of the prayer drum of a precocious cricket. A carpet of clouds with the face of a sleeping angel flies over the plain. When it passes over me it seems to wake up from a dream and then I smile. I close my eyes in order to see clearly the Salentine spell. Near me I hear the light steps of a woman. I fake like I am sleeping. I sense the wild odor of Ninfa as she bends to brush against my body, she is thinking if she should lie with the desecrator of her kingdom. A lock of her hair caresses against the inside of my arm. I do not resist. I try to caress her as well, but the attempt is in vain. With a gesture of apology I rise to my feet and move anxiously to look for her in every enchanted ravine. I call to her yelling, “My soul”. Only the uncontrollable laughter of the teasing stars is able to placate by humiliating desire. I fall to my knees and cry. However the moon joins in my aid blaming her spiteful children and soothing my mortality with words of sweet knowledge. I decide to undertake the process of understanding this great love and I promise myself that I will be able to kiss Ninfa on the summer solstice, if I can wait that long. This way I am consoled and I grant myself a sage cigarette and I breathe in the full gratitude of the Moon. I am able to catch the failure of a last impertinent laugh from the star that is furthest away in the sky. I no longer feel humiliated. I breathe in.
I wrote these words above living inside the painting of Fabio Pellicano that sits in front of my computer. The wonderful pastel “tells” of the Farm of the Myth in the feud of Tricase on an enchanted night in May.
Edoardo Winspeare