All posts tagged: September 11

STANLEY PLUMLY Limited Sight Distance

Stanley Plumly looks, with a poet’s eye and across the sublime landscape of northern Italy, at a certain day from early in the 21st century. That afternoon we’d finished up early, at about two-fifteen, and decided, since it was a particularly pristine day, to make the long descent to town. Maybe to get coffee, shop, whatever. We were fifteen minutes getting ready, and it would take fifteen minutes more to reach the exit gate. We were in lucky residence at the Villa Serbelloni, centerpiece of the Rockefeller fifty acre holdings spread out on the high hillside overlooking the village of Bellagio on one side and the meeting place of Lakes Como and Lecco on the other. The villa and its grounds and gardens are a sight to behold, located among some of the most beautiful mountain scenery in the world, the Pre-Alps, as they’re called, which serve as green and granite precursors to the real Alps, the great gray mountains whose ghostly, snowy forms loom almost invisibly. Much of this height and majesty are grounded …