The Blurred Seal
Ahmedabad at noon has a way of reminding the visitor that stone can store opinions. The walls near Shahpur Gate had been receiving the sun since morning and returned it in a slow, dry slap. The shaded...
Continue readingThe Bamboo Tongs To The Right
The guns at the Residency began again before sunrise, punctual as an irritable schoolmaster. They sounded first as dull coughs beyond the packed roofs, then as a trembling in the tin cup beside my mat...
Continue readingThe Cracked Bell Weight
The heat came early today, not with drama, since climate rarely consults a poet, but by laying one warm hand on the back of the neck and leaving it there. Gamron sat between brown hills and a bright h...
Continue readingThe Padded Clack Of Bells
The first proof that I had not returned to the Luoyang I know was not the palace city, nor the wide avenues, nor the dust-colored walls under repair for His Majesty’s great appetite for stone and labo...
Continue readingThe Feather That Changed Employers
The first thing I heard in Nitra was not chanting from the church or hammering from the palisade, though both were present and doing their best. It was the small wooden click of a boy’s heel against a...
Continue readingThe Moonwell Basin
The road into Seorabeol does not so much enter the capital as submit to it by degrees. First the path gathers wheel ruts, then drainage grooves, then little raised stones placed just where a careless ...
Continue readingThe Broken Thumb
The palace at Pylos is exactly where it ought to be and not at all what it ought to be. The hill is pale in the hard August light, its plaster walls bright enough to make the eyes water, and below it ...
Continue readingThe Warden’s Wet Rag
The road into Koumbi Saleh was already busy before the sun had climbed above the low houses, which seems to be a rule in every wealthy city: commerce likes to begin at an hour when sensible animals st...
Continue readingThe Heel of Skull Bread
Galway announced itself first by smell: kelp drying under walls, horse sweat in damp leather, tallow smoke trapped beneath low roofs, and the sour breath of fish guts recently scraped into the street ...
Continue readingThe Tractor Is Not Under The Tree
Osh looks, at first glance, like any other city trying to stay upright in November 2008. The mountains had snow on their shoulders this morning, and the streets below them were making the usual wet co...
Continue reading