Adriatic content

Walking the Rilke path north of the Duino castle rendered me almost ecstatically happy. I spat plum-stones and mandarin-pips into the Adriatic from this lofty vantage point as I ate my lunch.

I haven’t been surrounded by so many birds since I left Australia; I could not dignify them with proper names – Wee Yellow-throated Warbler, Sparrow von Rilke, Bluestreaked Chappie of Duino, Adriatic Gleeskipper? – but the presence of so many chirping featherlings left me nevertheless twitchingly content after a marked insufficiency of ornithological companionship. On my right, Duino Castle beckoned.
Given the height of the cliffs and the luminosity of the midday sun, all injunctions to leap towards the light in the Duino Elegies have been complicated.