When you come down to Reggio on the Strait of Messina, and see Sicily emerge from the sea like a bank of fog, you are at first almost impatient. “Is it nothing else?” you say. “It is only a land like all others.”
And when you disembark at Messina you are still impatient. Something ought to have happened while you have been away. It is dreadful to be met by the same poverty, the same rags, the same misery as when you went away.
You see that the spring has come. The fig-trees are again in leaf; the grape-vines send out tendrils which grow yards long in a few hours, and a mass of peas and beans are spread out on the fruit-stands by the harbor.
If you glance towards the heights above the town, you see that the gray cactus plants that climb along the edges of the cliffs are covered with blood-red flowers. They have blossomed everywhere like little, glowing flames. It looks as if the flower cups had been filled with fire, which now is breaking out.
But, however much the cactus blossoms, it is still gray and dusty and cobwebby. You say to yourself that the cactus is like Sicily. However many springs it may blossom, it is still the gray land of poverty.
It is hard to realize that everything has remained quiet and the same. Scylla and Charybdis ought to have begun to roar as in former days. The stone giant in the Girgenti temple should have risen with reconstructed limbs. The temple of Selinunto ought to have raised itself from its ruins. All Sicily should have awakened.
If you continue your journey from Messina down the coast, you are still impatient. You see that the peasants are still ploughing with wooden ploughs and that their horses are just as thin and broken and jaded.
Yes, everything is the same. The sun sheds its light over the earth like a rain of color; the pelargoniums bloom at the roadside; the sea is a soft pale blue, and caresses the shore.
Wild mountains with bold peaks line the coast. Etna’s lofty top shines in the distance.
You notice all at once that something strange is taking place. All your impatience is gone. Instead you rejoice in the blossoming earth and in the mountains and in the sea. You are reclaimed by the beautiful earth as a bit of her lost property. There is no time to think of anything but tufts and stones.