In these opening days of 2026 dense with dismay over the political turmoil, human cruelty and ominous feelings, I thought about a poem I wrote a couple of years ago when I went to visit a poet friend who was doing research in the Pozzuoli area near Naples for a book about the concept and practices of Empire and we visited the archeological areas including the cave of the Sibyl of Cumae, the submerged city of Baia, and the Phlegrean Fields. That magmatic terrain, full of mystery and foreboding, and the rich mythologies it spawned seem to have a kinship with the days we are currently experiencing.
ONWARD TO THE SIBYL’S CAVE
I.
Inking the afternoon of the lunar eclipse
on Monte Nuovo, the youngest hill of Europe,
So they tell us, here in this southernmost
Land of volcanoes, but what about Fimmvörduháls,
The youngest mound, begat by volcanoes of Iceland
Battling ice rather than warm waters?
Both North and South born of fiery entrails
Restless with gas, sulfur and brimstone
Hardly appeased, this one,
By a sudden bright, explosive
Gleaming of scotch broom
Born this March on its black flanks
Or the flash of tender green
Newly hatched lizards
Nor is the new mountain assuaged
By our flailing gifts
Of downloadable images
Impassable and implacable
As when witnessing
The century old parade of
Has-been empires
Put in their place
By Chance, Serendipity and Fate
Or possibly Human Error and Ignorance
Rather than turning the energy of attention
To human follies and foibles
The New Mountain prefers
To linger on its subterranean
Mushrooms and mycelia
The underground rumble
And distant vibration
Echoing the befuddled
Song of sirens and the sorrow
Of Parthenope ending her life
For the failing of her song
II.
The ghost of the hunchbacked poet
From a tribe that wouldn’t cast his lot
Either with the Romantics or the Neo-classics
Walks today these hilly flanks
Marveling at the bright yellow blaze
Of scotch broom
Humbly emanating from the scorched earth
Of volcanoes. Still obstinate
In refusing to inhale the mephitic
Gases of progress
Which already, two hundred years ago
Speeding on the trails of liveried coachmen
Designed the contours of this wretched future
III.
A glistening beckoning
With secrets and entreaties
On these shores where triclinia
Two millennia ago supported
The weary haunches of excess
Only to end up wave after wave
Buried away from the eye of land creatures
Who now discover them
On board of plexi-glassed bottomed
Pleasure boats, the more adventurous
Donning wetsuits
To catch a glimpse of barnacle
Bedecked statues of goddesses
Once adorned by a timid quail hearted
Ancilla seeking an Elysian getaway
IV.
Today after crossing the Gate of Felicity
The Global Positioning System finally
Led the motorized coach straight to the ruins we sought
Scantly maintained, moss overgrown
Just to the right level of sublime
Preferred by Continental and Northern
Writers and aesthetes. Above the Sybil’s cave
Wildflowers herbs and capers
Thrusting their roots in the cracks
Of volcanic rock and tufa
To the side, trapezoidal openings
Added by military men fond of tunnels
Here we are today, transgressing the barrier
In the penumbra cast by earth and moon
Seeking oracles on a hundred disheveled discs
Dispersed by one hundred cross winds
An ode to dissonance and new mis-under-standings.
Cover image : Uncredited photo from Italian article on the Sibyl’s cave in Cumae.