Trolley wires, Helsinki

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Messina
David Keplinger

Take Messina: you’d be impressed and even sad

that I remember. The crag of mottled faces

the rocks made like old pensioners in back pages

of a magazine. The light as bright as dentistry.

In Messina you’re alone‚ available‚ the youth

in your face still rising. As if there’ll be no end

to youth and solitude‚ the sea below Messina

answers: solitude is beauty‚ even after you

get cold‚ go back to the hotel‚ and light

begins to change‚ to fade‚ at each stage resonant.

Messina? I have never been. You told the story

quickly when I loved you; now here it is

exactly as you left it‚ its old stone faces

alternately old and then like children‚ elated by a fallen tooth.

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... When I ask to view a papyrus fragment from the vaults, a librarian pauses to absorb the request, returning my gaze a little blankly. Just as I begin to frame a withdrawal of this possibly audacious demand, she blinks, smiles amiably, and disappears down one of the library's vast corridors. She returns carrying a gun-metal tray on which a sheet of papyrus, older than many a classical fluted column and as brittle as a desiccated insect wing, has been laid out with reverential delicacy. ...

Luke Slattery in The Australian