[Editors’ Note: Learn about how the “Nine Poets Speak” series came to be in place here.]
The Black Madonna of Tindari in Sicily
took gentle vengeance on a woman
who came on a pilgrimage
her baby in her arms.
On climbing the shrine’s wind swept cliff
the woman exclaimed,
“I traveled so far to see somebody blacker than me!”
In an instant,
her child disappeared
transported to the spot of dry sand below
in the Mediterranean Sea.
The woman screamed.
A boat was sent to rescue her child.
She realized
The Black Madonna of Tindari taught
that racism is a sin.
* Author’s note: This poem was inspired by an old legend passed down orally. The poem depicts the way it was told to the author, who always assumed the woman referred to in the poem was Sicilian. According to the legend, the woman was of a dark complexion, herself, but indulged in that hierarchical thinking in which humans are prone, trying to find ways to feel superior to others, even the Black Madonna. She failed to embrace the message inscribed on the base of the statue: “Negra Sum Sed Formosa” (I am black but powerful/beautiful).
Another fabulous poem from a fine poet.