Clio’s Kingdom

Requiem for “L’Eclisse” (epitaph)

poleggi-eclisse

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…

Flying in the Water

acqua-con-scritta-completa-rid

SILVIA PIO Born by the sea, she lived in a fisherman’s shack with her parents and a number of brothers and sisters, and by the sea she remained. During the day, she went down to the beach and sat with…

Frozen Ground

terra-gelata-rid

SILVIA PIO The morning they buried her husband, four men had to come and dig because the earth was hard as marble. It had been two days since he died. The sutrau, the sexton, had wanted to wait a bit…

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 Child

Il figlio

SILVIA PIO Once, a man lived in this town with his wife and three children. She was always in and out of the mental asylum. He was on his boat day in and day out and, when he got home…

The Eclipse

poleggi-eclisse

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…