WAYLAID BY NOSTALGIA
On holiday in Rome,
waylaid by nostalgia,
I said let’s go to the writers’ café.
It’s just round the corner,
Rosati’s, Piazza del Popolo.
Alberto Moravia and Elsa Morante
used to sit there,
glamour couple of the 1950s,
and Pier Paolo Pasolini swung by.
Once I saw Tennessee Williams,
with a young flame
screech to a halt before the tables in his Maserati,
fresh from the festival in Spoleto,
his gaze raking the café terrace,
white suit blazing in the six-o’clock sun.
Today, forty years later,
the café has a clean scrubbed look,
plenty of gleaming chrome.
Cloths draped over their folded arms,
the waiters stand at the entrance,
making sure that the customers
get a good wait for their money.
The latter rather thin on the ground –
just a few of the not-so-young
looking a little lost
and a handful of backpackers,
heads in their guidebooks
that tell them something
about where they are sitting.
Nowhere a writer in evidence.
‘Although,’ I say,
‘what does a writer look like anyway?
Would you know one if you saw one?’