Torcello was the first island in what is now the Venetian lagoon,  to be inhabited.  The Byzantine settlement is still very much in evidence.

After seeing Harold Pinter’s play ‘Betrayal’ at the National Theatre in the early eighties, which features a couple of scenes set in the one hotel that existed on the island at the time, I thought that I should go for a look.

The play had affected me greatly; the unusual going back from the present to the past scene after scene, the first rate performances and the obviously seeringly personal, autobiographical element in the work.

It turned out to be a good and lucky choice. Close to the hotel in question, which was of course, right out of my pocket and very close to the bridge over one of the canals there, I saw an old villa and decided to ask what chance there was of their putting me up.  I was welcomed warmly and enthusiastically by two young brothers Franco and Bruno and their mother who later took me under her wing, earnestly attempting to teach me some basic italian.

They were all in the process of refurbishing the place and it was literally falling apart. The room they offered me was half-finished and cheap. They also helped me apply for a local vaporetti bus pass – the sort of document that generally goes only to local Venetians. It was a memorable stay.  The poem below was a direct result.

 

TORCELLO.

 It could have been no random simple accident

That called  me out across the water, late

One August afternoon, to seek Torcello Isle

That green mosquitoed, mossy fen  – to contemplate;

Uncanny moments when the water flushed bright pink,

Or cyclamen, and synthesised an altered state;

The daily turn of trippers bouncing from the boats,

Gone flouncing down to buy and barter tourist lace,

Then on to reverence and honour holy sites,

Before their picnic – meats with rosemary and mace,

And final hasty scramble for the water bus:

Deserted night conferring magic on the place.

 

For all the forty residents and me the dark

Was altogether like a living state of grace.

Such vastness, never tawdry, never opulent,

Like Casanova’s City of the golden plate.

I stayed for twenty timeless days and rarely took

The boat to travel round – at restless chugging pace _

The Lido, Grand Canal, Murano, Marco Square

Or see the loud Venetian gondoliers race.

Torcello, island with a secret inner lake,

Where Emperor of birds; the noble heron, faced

a row-boat navigated through those thick canals

by Bruno, Franco’s younger brother, who had traced

a course for us, to Earth and Heaven’s interface.