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Going Home to Campania
I come back to my cool and quiet road,
Testudo-shielded by umbrella pines,
Where pavement cracked and garbage overflowed
To fade beyond in bright converging lines.
I come back as a stranger, long since grown,
Back to a land I knew when I was small,
Whose image often to my mind is shown,
Appearing in my daydreams most of all.
My arbored road leads home in memory:
To chilly autumns filled with smoke and haze,
And muddy rains far-flung across the sea
From Africa. To blue celestial days
Of snowless winter and his early nights,
When music rises up from far away
To cobbled streets alive with golden lights,
And fireworks throw embers in the bay.
To pale-eyed springtime in her bridal gown,
Progressing through the sleeping fields with grace.
She stops at summer’s altar and bows down,
As fruit and foliage take flower’s place.
And through the seasons wheeling on and on,
The giant bones of empires remain
Immaculate—though flesh be picked and gone—
In temples of the holy and profane,
In cities built by half-forgotten kings
High in the hills two thousand years ago,
In aqueducts, and many older things
So deeply buried I will never know.
I found this land as when I left it last,
The sea and mountains and the fields between,
And thought that I could drive into the past,
By turning down my road festooned in green.
Here are the potholes gaping one by one,
The iron gates, the walls adorned with vines.
But now my road lies burning in the sun
Between two rows of stumps that once were pines.
.
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Patricia Rogers Crozier has been published in The Washington Post. She holds a B.S. in Physics from Mississippi College. She resides in Gulf Breeze, Florida and works at Publix. She is the winner of the 2024 SCP International Poetry Competition.
I can feel the sadness of you returning to your home and it spoke volumes to me. My childhood home was decimated by a tornado, and I have not felt the need to return there again in the future. I suppose I should be thankful we moved.
That is very sad to hear, what a violent end to your childhood home! I am happy that my poem spoke to you but also sorry, considering the circumstances.
Patricia, “Going Home” presents a beautifully structured memorial to Campania and all it represents. You pause after the first line for memory, history, climate, mythology, the seasons, indeed for everything you knew, and deeper things you didn’t know about your early home. “Testudo” alerts the reader that we enter ancient times, but the pines that create that military shield formation return at the end of the poem as present-day stumps. You display sorrow at tree-felling to lament the passage of time in a glorious poem, worthy to stand alongside others using the same motif by Scottish poet Thomas Campbell, English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Indian poet Dilip Chitre.
Thank you for your lovely words!
The end of your poem is like a kick in the gut, especially for someone who enjoys nature. Childhood homes are often not as we remember them. The trees around my childhood home have also been cut down, but of course the stumps have been removed too. Fortunately, nature keeps regenerating. I think our nostalgia for earlier times and memories might not always be related to earthly homes, but could be related to an eternal home. Your ending also reminds me of the end of Isaiah, chapter 6, for what it’s worth.
It’s a risk to return to your old haunts! The trees always seem to be the first to go. Thank you for your words of insight.
Very effective how you begin and end the poem with contrasting images of both road and pines, past and present. What’s that saying – you can’t go home again? Perhaps it’s best not to.
As much as it’s interesting to see what’s changed, it’s usually more unsettling than satisfying to go back!
A beautiful poem, Patricia, lyrical and true.
You paint for us a beautiful picture of the Campanian countryside, with its timeless blend of ancient and modern, its blue skies and picturesque landscapes, along with crumbling infrastructure. But this is much more than a mere travel log. Your personification of the seasons reminds us of classical myth, and you convey the impression that this land is indeed home.
Your poem also struck a personal chord with me, as my family came from Campania not that long ago. You write from the perspective of someone who really takes in the flavor of the region.