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Sicily

 

Speaking here in dying tongues

Spoken by their mothers

Forging here a home away

Built on backs of brothers

 

Gifts of soil worked by hand

And celebrate the reaping

A cup and plate run red once more

This promise ever keeping

 

In a faded photograph

Olive trees and hills

Child laughing in the arms

A culture there distills

 

Blood and tears upon the dock

Hands to wave goodbye

Ce la luna mezzo mare

To sea sick to cry

 

Another shovel breaks the soil

Two families are one

A child baptized in the faith

A voyage just begun

 

Tell me about your father’s farm

Ruins from the Greeks

And all the tiny villages

Between here and the sea

 

Faithful, grey and curious

Hold fast the idea

A solemn line on a summer’s day

To pray Ave Maria

 

50 years or so have passed

Since ships drove emigration

With artists’ names upon their sides

Through Halifax’s station

 

And this letter of a place

Another outpost to a nation

Whose sons and daughters sowed the seed

Of my greatest creation

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© Michael Worthington Music 2014

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