The magnolia

I am still day-dreaming...

...you entered the street through an archway. The street was so narrow that if you walked in the middle you could extend your arms and touch the walls on either side. Then, beyond an iron gate, it was condemned to lose itself in the labyrinth of other streets and small squares that made up the old town. At the end of the street there was just a small door that was always closed. It seemed to you the only way out was to climb over the houses, towards the burning blue sky.

In a bend of the street there was a balcony. You could climb up to it, almost without effort. To the side of the balcony, and spread over the mud walls of the garden, sprouted the huge magnolia, covering everything with its branches. In the spring, the snowy tops of its flowers posed among the brilliant and pungent leaves with the subtle mystery of the virgin.

That magnolia always represented more than a beautiful reality. In it was encoded the image of life. Albeit at times you wished it was different, freer perhaps, or more in the stream of people and things, you knew very well it was that living room of the tree, that blossoming without witnesses, that gave it such towering beauty. It was consumed by its own ardour and its so pure flowers sprouted in solitary silence like a rejected sacrifice on the alter of some god.