Messer Marco Polo

A weary rider on a New York‑to‑Florida train receives an unexpected summons to aid a centuries‑old countryman from Ulster. The journey drags through the industrial sprawl of Westchester, yet each mile pulls the narrator back into the emerald glens, the heather‑scented hills and the roaring surf of Antrim. As the landscape shifts, the voice of an ancient, blackthorn‑tough man—Malachi of the Long Glen—begins to echo in his mind.

Through lyrical flashbacks, the tale reveals the old man's tangled past—studies in Spanish monasteries, service with the Papal Zouaves, and a stint in the American Civil War—without ever settling on a single identity. His presence becomes a living bridge between the mythic folklore of the Irish countryside and the gritty modernity of the United States, urging the narrator to confront both personal loss and the weight of ancestral memory. The prose swirls with Gaelic chant, sea‑foam imagery, and the quiet melancholy of a world that seems to exist simultaneously in two continents.