|
|||
|
|||
|
|||
|
Nox est perpetua una dormienda.I'm picturing a whitewashed house, the bedroom overlooking an olive grove by the sea. There's wine; there's poetry; there's you, me, eros: so: what if all this were to end at midnight? Night, Catullus said, is sleep perpetual. His fear of death, he thought, would put his mistress in the mood. But soon she left him, and he died. When I was small, I dreaded ignorance. Now, though, all I ask is to be made forgetful in your arms. When Heraclitus said gods know all things are good and just, he might have meant by "gods" eternal knowers of things truly known: the Good, the Just, the soul's delight enacted by the flesh. Those waking need not act and speak as if they were asleep, he said. Though sleepy, you and I need not be sunk in isolate stupefaction, but may touch, while in the bay a little square sail stiffens, and we watch, oars, though massive to arms of oarsmen, tiny from our bed. And look! That tiny man on deck, who paces and shouts orders to the crew, from here cannot be heard under the soft crush of the waves borne up invisibly between the sash and sill. |
|||
|
|||
