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. 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. 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.