Travel Pages
Where mules are swishing tails in olive-groves And stalls are redolent of thyme and cloves, Where hills are pine-clad and seas pure Turner With fishing smacks and nets, and a Taverna, Where (local artisans in clay or brass, Or craft embroidery, or blowing glass) Men cling like barnacles to café shade Near mart or souk, bazaar or quay, arcade, Where whitewashed churches in time-hallowed calm Exude, inside, baroque-mysterious charm, Where zither, pipe or shawm play folk at night For farmstead barbecues by candlelight, Where old vernacular particulars (Or, from spectacular funiculars, Wide views, vertigiously unique, Of roads like ribbon, or jewel-glinting creek) Cause colour and excitement each to teem Kaleidoscopic as some Monet scene, Where time stands still and air's like wine at dawn - The whole bang shoot's one monumental yawn.
This flaccid, guff-stuffed, cliché-dripping prose, Less sleep-inducing than plain comatose, Might be cling-filmed, so sanitised and flat; Are place and people's lives as bland as that?
S. E. G. Curtis
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