Summertime in Italy Brilliant orange smudged with gold a lazily shaped cloud lies along the skyline like a fire eater off duty and relaxing at the beach, driven mildly crazy by a large beaker of wine perhaps while not far inland a sirocco rustles through a Corriere della Sera turning dog-eared at the feet of pines. Ah daydreams, swimming trunks, cicadas! Shades of ice-cream and balloons! The sunlight stores up energy like a horse at a gymkana where differences in colour count more than any prize and lest it get overbearing zephyrs provide a hint of blue. Viviana, my mind’s imprinted with your name and that trip in your father’s boat across Lake Como one madcap June: A mountain squall turned the water miles of green and moments later the weather switched again, a middle distance painter revising his ideas... Inside the Duomo was cooler than any drink and shadowy Ferrara’s belltowers sent the pigeons flocking like a roll of drums. Even the cars are pretty, said your eyes. Up on its hilltop a dozing Arezzo dreams saintly processions across the intonaco of time-cracked walls. Below the ramparts noon signals shadow- squadrons into swift retreat. A team of oxen, colossally slow, seems to collapse a field’s verge. Still as cardboard at the reins, only a yeoman stops them, plough a tiller exchanging green for beige. Back in Florence truculent Tuscan farmers protesting against the latest meat tax set the cobbles echoing like marakas. Too old to pay it any mind, the Arno shrugs a verdant shoulder and then winds on. Cypresses duskily dissect the slopes into neat rectangles and squares. The end of an affair spiderwebs a room in one of Treviso’s five hotels. But basta! Melancholy’s a drone for another clime and season. Ignoring the yells of sandwich-sellers the express whistles, terns and swallows rise above the station at Venice Maestre. How well the tracks know all the operas! At a shift of points the chorus switches From Mozart to Donizetti – Behind buff-and-pastel houses the sea steps out in sequins toward hump- backed islands and a meeting with the moon. Genova, Rimini, Sorrento! My heart’s a belfry haunted by your vowels’ sweet clarity. Only the British Council bustles with busts and does not see the Renaissance continuing in the twilight’s strides, tender depths of a signora’s smile. Erice with its head in the clouds – Selinunte's tumbled temples – Etna smoking like some great uncle recalling the furies of his youth – These and other fleeting scenes, salute! That run downhill from Fiesole when my shoes grew wings and I thought I’d never stop yet now relive in your touch and gaze, ah names like rural sportcars headed for Alpine tunnels, forest’s flickering gallery of shade to which the moon holds the only key... Martin Bennett | Mudlark No. 12 Contents | Bird Souq: An Expatriate Guide