A fountain’s white plumage noisily lifting water
distracts me while I wait in line. Spray silvers
a statue stroking a lyre astride a dolphin
in its broad basin. Postcards (orange-yellow
parterres, temples like marble boutiques, shaded
lanes, bedsheet-taut lawns, pink sandstone facades,
lake views, palms in huge pots) frame like bouquets
the grilled cashier who hands change and my ticket.
A blue guard gestures. Passing the gate, I enter
paradise as Fragonard would have painted it,
Eden no serpent spoils, a toppled rainbow
permitting each entrant (a brown-capped man unfolding
his map, two women crocheting on a bench,
a child tossing bread to swans, a kissing couple
twined, it seems, in the stitchery of a trellis
dripping with ivy) unmolested passage
into this preferred world of sinless apples
ripe to the touch, tasted with delight. Delight…
Where else is delight so conveniently distilled?
So served-like-tea? Look: a sly-grinning Pan
winks through a hedge’s peep-hole, his flute piping
ditties of no tone. Look: a buxom Flora
offers a peony in a bounteous gesture
plain to the dullest clod. (Blooms blaze around her
—could they refuse?) Look: felled by hounds, serene stags
jet water into a pool. Warming, I splash
cool handfuls over my parched face and neck:
the sky’s heat is losing balance. Skimming nature’s dross,
landscapers and architects lacked skill to tame
its blue—an impending, insane kaleidoscope
of prismatic weathers nothing at all can be made of.
Hence, the Bath House’s foyer elegantly
replaces a glass skylight with this oil painting:
Aurora, smilingly cushioned on buttery clouds
as pink-cheeked cherub mobs gleefully roll
indignant Night head-over-heels down to darkness.
More tractable than sky, the countryside, too,
sprawled rawly, a drawingboard a beneficent deity
bequeathed his precocious progeny. Hence, the grounds
present these dead-straight tulip ranks, a red
regime as wax-precise as periwigged courtiers
refusing to sweat, their poker-iron poses
a game, it appears, where nods are forfeits. Change,
bumptious elsewhere, lives here too, but it creeps
stealthy as aging: Athena’s outstretched arm
handless, tattooed with graffiti’s casual libels;
the Mosque’s (as Turkish laborers pray) gum wrappers,
smoke butts. I almost hear serpiginous ivy
muttering, “Let the tiniest crack appear,
the custodian drowse a year—my Bacchic clusters
will gag this statuary as bread-starved Parisian
throngs throttled the innocence of the young queen
who liked this view, my probing tendrils, meshed roots
fang their claim, my rife vines hoist their green flag.”
Confused minnows, sunny patches on the grass scurry,
pause, submerge, reemerge. Decay’s been noticed:
the Waterspout’s dull birds sport new coppery feathers;
the Orangery’s faded festoons of stucco garlands
glitter with fresh red paint; a denimed painter,
brush in hand, hunches in scaffolding like a Giotto,
healing with each meticulous dab a jigsaw
puzzle of neglect. Sun-basking in wicker pots,
oleander and frilled palmetto classicize
intentionally the brooding Teutonic backdrop
of conifers thickening along the low brick wall.
Likewise, across a bridge, the English Garden’s
pastoral greenery trumpets Knowledge’s triumph:
on the Science Temple’s staircase, a tame sphinx
(its riddle solved?) curls like an amiable tabby.
Further down a canal’s perspective-end,
the Theater sleeps, or muses, its pink stones
flushed purple in late sun. Then a door opens.
Lamps sparkle. Is a concert done? Tuxedos,
gowns drift outdoors, chat, glancing at dusk’s umbers.
My walk ends here: the spattered statue, playing
enrapt in graying fountain spray, disregards
the passing crowd. A bell! Startled, a mother
clutches her purse, calls to a splashing child,
Jetzt geht’s nach Haus. The fountain’s plumage totters,
collapses like a parasol. Breeze stirs
the pool’s last, feathery rufflings, then calm gloss
mirrors gold-fringed cirrus. Entrants now turned exiles
resume lives briefly laid aside, departing
past the closed ticket window to cars, cafes,
coves of choice or indecision. The blue guard gestures.
Tossing my spent stub in a wastebin, passing
a gate I can’t reenter now, I pause
at a crosswalk, pedestrian. Harsh headlights
stream by. Dim over sundown’s muddy reds,
the moon’s thin crescent ushers dusk to black.
