Home » Reading & Literature » Performance Poetry » In Dante's Country

In Dante's Country

© Billy Marshall Stoneking

"This time is the time when
the things we love are dying
and the things we do not love
are rushing to replace them"

Rainier Maria Rilke, "The Ninth Elegy" from The Duino Elegies

I remember the images I had of Tuscany before I arrived: the yellow dust settling round the old railway station as I stepped from the train; sunlight falling through leafy trees, a rutted, dirt road snaking towards the old farmhouse where I'd beat out my exile from Australia. These and other visions had fed me during my final days in the land of Oz.

An isolated farmhouse in the middle of Tuscany was a curious place to take my body after my sorties into the London, Paris, Vienna and Salzburg poetry scenes; but I've never been one of those who thinks a new haircut and a change of clothes can make everything right again. I felt sick and hollow inside, and imagined a year living in Dante's country might prove a healing experience.

The sweltering heat of midsummer slapped me in the face as I emerged from the train station. Outside, I looked around, hoping for a taxi in a seemingly taxi-less world. Sinalunga. It was small and ugly; not the kind of place tourists visited with alacrity, if at all, despite the fact Garibaldi had once fought a battle here. Maybe I was Sinalunga's first tourist! It didn't look as if tourists had ever been an important part of the life here, and I was certain my sudden appearance wasn't going to change that. In the park across the street, a gaggle of old men lounged in the shade, gossiping regally without so much as a nod in my direction.


I left my luggage on the footpath and crossed the park to where several pay-phones stood resolute and mostly out-of-order. A young man with a cigarette stuck in the corner of his mouth was hanging onto the only phone that still worked. His words rolled seductively from his tongue like warm dough on a summer night. He had no idea I was waiting, nor would he have cared had he known. The only other living creature in his universe was the woman he was talking to - his lover, I imagined - and that's the way it remained all the way to the end of his cigarette, which he finally disposed of with a florish before making the usual kissing sounds into the receiver and hanging up.