LOOK up: a dusty-footed, noon-slow track straggles to this high place, a village sculptured from its pedestal, white crown on a white rock face. Look down: at boulders, stones and sand cascaded through evergreens, August-grey; at gay sails clustered in a tinsel harbour in a motionless, toy, blue bay. The village: down precipitous terraces the arm-spanned alleys run; and smell of peach and dirt and pine and garlic brews there with perpetual sun. Perpetual! Ah, no, now all dissolved and broken like a spell — a cloudless noon of one Provençal day: this was Ramatuelle. |