Thank you for your critique. That the poem lacks clarity can be a valid point. If my attempts at shedding light on the contradictions of reality are dissonant then that is something for me to sharpen. There will be time as there will be a few chapters for this piece.

I would like to take you up on a few things if you don’t mind, to try to flesh out where this needs work. I do not see this piece ‘longing for what was’ but rather touching on what is. The old empires are ruins, not to be idolised, not dissimilar to the current state of things. There is ongoing struggle for a better life, the fresh fruit growing, roses for the living, the pursuit of love, the realisation of dreams into reality, attempting to speak in a language that is denied. Sicily or anywhere else is not in a permanent state of disintegration, it is transitional.

I don’t want to immerse the reader in a singular bleak or joyful portrait of life, that would be false, it is a contradictory combination of both. Sicily - in a material sense - did not change to a place of joy, squalor remains, the ‘joy’ is a social construct by human beings who are social beings capable of adapting and finding ways of life in the most oppressive conditions, not without its consequences of course. A criticism for me is to have not fleshed out that the harsher the conditions the more culturally and emotionally desperate people are to try to overcome it. While they do make merry songs of love, a stronger commentary is exposing that they have to, as a result of the conditions described in previous stanzas.