Clio’s Kingdom

Requiem for “L’Eclisse” (epitaph)

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SILVANO GREGOLI Gaspare Lobino (pseudonym of Silvano Gregoli) took a step back and looked at his desk with a tired eye. The ancient behemoth had eight drawers, eight mouths full of notebooks of various sizes, scattered sheets of paper, old…

StonyMoon or HoneyMoon?

Visions lunaires

SILVANO GREGOLI I recently witnessed two unusual events. Unusual in themselves, first; then doubly unusual because, although random in nature, they were mysteriously connected. The first event took place in the waiting room of a barbershop in Italy. As I…

The Eclipse

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SILVANO GREGOLI Exactly sixty years ago, on the morning of February 15, 1961, a total solar eclipse in Italy affected southern Piedmont, Liguria, part of Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany, northern Lazio, Umbria, Marche and Abruzzo. To find another total solar eclipse in…

Olive

The veld

MADDALENA POLEGGI I met Olive at the library, she was strange but familiar. At the time I couldn’t know that we were going to spend a few months together, sharing our deepest thoughts and so many intimate details of our…

Sitting by the Harbour

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JOHN IRVING CLARKE Every hour, as regular as the muezzin calling the faithful, the ferry rumbles in a wide arc across the bay. The engines grumble and the propellers expel a wash which slops loudly against the quayside walls. The…

Forget Me Not

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JOHN IRVING CLARKE When he woke, the woman was standing over him. He took in his surroundings – the scrubby bushes under which he’d thrown himself, the wind barging through the paltry shelter, the darkening sky – and he would…