Bucharest and all that.

A man sits at a small, round table outside a café in the busy Macca Vilacrosse arcade – hardly a noteworthy sight. On the table sits the empty cup from which he had just drunk an espresso, the little cube of sugar provided balances unopened and unused on the saucer lip. 

Cold air trickles through the arcade and a harsh, European light falls through the yellowy-green glass of the vaulted ceiling onto the pages of the book he has been trying to read. Clearly he  suffers. 

The resigned, troubled expression on his ashen face speaks (in French with a Romanian accent) of some psychological disturbance and his physical weakness is evidenced by a thin cough that tries in vain to clear some congestion of the lungs.

I think he must be, perhaps, one of those nineteenth century romantic poets, ravaged by consumption from lying in wet fields to look at the moon after an evening in an opium den. 

For all his literary brilliance the poet has no business acumen and never thinks to sell his poems; nor is he sufficiently ardent to win for himself a wealthy benefactress. Only many years after the consumption has carried him hence will his poetry earn any money and it will go straight into the coffers of an astute cousin who inherits his manuscripts. 

Still, a poet who has never suffered cannot produce good poems, or so I’m told.