Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - XXVII. Summer
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Denna sida har korrekturlästs minst en gång.
(skillnad)
(historik)
and with plenty of wine in our heads, we all went
to bed to sleep the sleep of the just.
* * *
Hardly had I fallen asleep, than I found myself
standing on a lonely plain strewn with débris of
broken masonry, huge blocks of travertine and
fragments of marbles half hidden by ivy, rosemary
and wild honey-suckle, cistus and thyme. On
a crumbling wall of opus reticulatum sat an
old shepherd playing on the flute of Pan to his
flock of goats. His wild, long-bearded face was
scorched by sun and wind, his eyes were burning
like fire under his bushy eyebrows, his lean
emaciated body was shivering under his long blue
cloak of a Calabrian shepherd. I offered him a
little tobacco, he handed me a slice of fresh
goat-cheese and an onion. I understood him with
difficulty.
What was the name of this strange place?
It had no name.
Where did he come from?
From nowhere, he had always been here, this
was his home.
Where did he sleep?
He pointed with his long staff to a flight of
steps under a tumbledown archway. I climbed
down the steps hewn in the rock and stood in a
dim, vaulted room. In the corner a straw
mattress with a couple of sheepskins as bedcover.
Suspended round the walls and from the ceiling
bunches of dried onions and tomatoes, an
earthenware jug of water on the rough table. This was
his home, these were his belongings. Here he
had lived his whole life, here he would lie down
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