Ovid in Tears - Jack Gilbert

[Larry Robinson]

Ovid in Tears


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 had made a world.  About Hagia 
Sofia 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 while sunlight,” he said 
as they picked him up.   “Not the 
great fires burning at 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.”


	- Jack Gilbert