My name is Podrigotuma and in my early 20s I lived in Switzerland for a little bit less than a year, the French-speaking part.

And somehow the memory of that time looms in my mind much more than I thought it would.

It was only eight or nine or ten months, I can't quite remember, but it comes back to me so often. Sometimes when I see

a friend from that time or in the sight of mountains, or if I hear a particular French phrase or

accent, but especially over and over again, whenever I smell the strong scent of pine or wild herbs,

especially thyme, or that really delicate scent of wild flowers.

That's when I am absolutely transported back to Switzerland.

Tangible things like that transport me back in a second back 30 years.

Jasmine. Jasmine by Cyrus Ceres.

These are the days of Jasmine in Rome,

when headlong emboldened April has dissolved,

and the joyous braiding of sun and rain

brings this sweet, steady broadcast. When I step from the suppertime train, that's what

greets me. Roman hedges and walkways, graffiti-laden precincts

graced with pallid fireworks,

so even the most tumbled-down niches seem breeze swept,

festive now with fragrance.

Jasmine, the elating moments shibleth,

the cool enrapturing knights cavalry,. Even crone glorious Darya, my terrace-loving

neighbour confides. When Gagliano came back from the front, his right hand was bandaged, but in his

uninjured one, ah poet, he held a fist fistful of Jasmine he'd picked along the path to my door.

How could I not become his wife?

...