Naples

PDF

“a thousand colours”,

Pino Daniele belts,

laying soul bare,

a subaltern air,

squalor, beauty,

narrow street,

creativity, chaos,

musing philosophers,

painters, dramatists

decorated niches,

Filumena’s Virgin with

Blessed Maradona showcased city’s humour

popular and on screen

music so organic,

Caruso pierces heart

of forlorn migrant

in Europe, beyond

Pulcinella, San Gennà,

Wit, superstition,

humped mammoth

across famed bay

in slumber lies

like ‘Veiled Christ’

poverty, Gomorrah,

‘smash and grab’,

industrial riches bereft

open Southern vein

of Italian colonisation,

natural charm, depredation

place eerily familiar,

authentic home

for me and others

of southern stock, rigidity to escape

and northern regulation