Quarry Morphology
I walk through narrow paths that cling to the steep mountainside, ⁄ Along endless white roads covered in marble dust, ⁄ The sounds of chunks of marble crushing with my every step, ⁄ Soaking in the bright sun reflecting off the towering whiteness of excavated stone.
As I overlook the manufactured landscape created by thousands of years of mining industry, ⁄ I wonder about the irreversible modification of the face of the earth: ⁄ So many fortunes made, so many lives lost, ⁄ Families, artisans ever responding to the latest trends in the global marketplace, ⁄ Centuries of projecting desires, value and imagination since Roman times.
“The stone remembers forever and demands our respect,”locals and artisans tell me. ⁄ “But it also has its natural limitations as to how much it can do. Be patient. When it breaks, it breaks.”
Do we humans shape the marble, or is the marble shaping us?
