The
oath of silence
She’s
turned off the lights;
darkness
hangs on the collar
of
the room
the floors reflect
on
their jellyfish ceramics
a man
hanging at the ceiling,
watching
her face
from
the corner he’s hunched in,
a
blade of light slides
through
his vacuous retinas,
she
knows what it means
and
makes no haste in laying
flat
on her back,
wishing
for time to fall in
thick
liquid – her mighty powers
moan
like a cat’s lashes
pulled
off from their roots;
her
lids drop like a concubine’s robe;
her
body arches skywards.
Helen Leete -- Arched Back Bather
There is a Sicilian proverb, "Cu è surdu, orbu e taci, campa cent'anni 'mpaci" ("He who is deaf, blind, and silent will live a hundred years in peace"). Omertà is the Mafia code of silence. The word may have been derived from the Latin "humilitas" (humility or modesty), which became "umirtà" and then finally "omertà" in some southern Italian dialects, but it may also have come from the Spanish "hombredad" (manliness), modified after the Sicilian "omu" (man); the code, however, has been observed at least as far as back as the 16th century as a way of opposing Spanish rule.
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