Speculation about who will be the next pope is an exercise in futility, but the first 2 paragraphs of this article by Damian Thompson about a Portuguese cardinal are very startling.
His poems depict emotional pain in cryptic language. In ‘The Last Day of Summer,’ unable to ‘choose attention or choose forgetfulness’, he recalls ‘your impatient and inconceivable eyes/ here with me now/ as I dance alone/ in the empty city’.
Byron wrote of seeing in Milan "the correspondence (in the prettiest love letters in the world) of Lucretia Borgia with Cardinal Bembo, (who you say, made a very good cardinal,)" -- letter of November 6, 1816 to Thomas Moore.
ReplyDeleteNo doubt the English bookmakers could tell you the odds on this Portuguese cardinal. It is unlikely that I have ever heard of him.
I am sure he won't be pope - but thank you for the quotation from Byron - I read much till I was 25 or 26 but then it tailed off... so much to read.
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