| Ovid in Tears by Jack Gilbert Love is like a garden in the heart, he said. They asked him what he meant by garden. He explained about gardens. “In the cities,” he said, “there are places walled off where color and decorum are magnified into a civilization. Like a beautiful woman,” he said. How like a woman, they asked. He remembered their wives and said garden was just a figure of speech, then called for drinks all around. Two rounds later he was crying. Talking about how Charlemagne couldn’t read but still made a world. About Hagia Sophia and putting a round dome on a square base after nine hundred years of failure. The hand holding him slipped and he fell. “White stone in the white sunlight,” he said as they picked him up. “Not the great fires built on the edge of the world.” His voice grew fainter as they carried him away. “Both the melody and the symphony. The imperfect dancing in the beautiful dance. The dance most of all.” |