How many people have felt intense emotions in the summer days, listening to the melody of cicadas? We were young when used to put blankets on the ground outside terraces, to sleep better being more fresh in sunny summer evenings. The smell of sulphur and the mature figs was in the air, the lush countryside was characterized by intense and vibrant sensations of serenity and continuity.
The atmosphere was muted and mysterious. We were curious to know why that tiny animal (the cicada) never was tired of singing. Often we looked for the small animal among the rows of vines, in the hope to seize it, but unsuccessfully. Adults told that the singing was due to the rubbing of the little legs and this fact contributed to ripen grapes and wheat. While cicadas sang nonstop, the quiet afternoons were interrupted only by the screech of the wheels of a cart, or by the voice of the stallholder ice-cream seller and his cones at the cost of 5£. It was the most wonderful moment of the day, and we, impatient, waited for the afternoon to go out and buy ice cream and then to play hide and seek, cops and robbers and other various games. The road suddenly lived up with mum’s voices and happy children, while the old ice-cream seller, Biagio, busy but happy, empted the containers of pistachio, chocolate and lemon, the only three savours we knew.
In the meanwhile we waited for the grape harvest, the ‘great feast’, and finally the farmers harvested the fruits of the entire year of work. The Mother Earth rewarded them for the love that they had shown. In fall, the campaign was full of different sounds, voices and songs of peasants and the cicadas that stayed with us for weeks, ended their season and left a great vacuum. Recently this hymn to nature has increasingly weakened and tired, in some areas has almost disappeared because of the numerous noises of the city. The Habitat is increasingly poor. This mysterious animals seem to send a message: “there is not space for melodies of nature in a world where the noise and chaos of the modern civilization have got the upper hand”.
