The old garden

I am daydreaming…

…there in that garden you dreamed life was a never ending enchantment. The breadth of the sky urged you to action; the compulsion of the flowers, the leaves and the water to seek pleasure without remorse.

First you had to follow a long dark corridor. Then, through an archway at the end, the light from the garden appeared, a light whose golden brilliance imbued the green of the leaves and the water in the pond. And, outside, closed within the iron railings, it shone like liquid emerald, dense, serene and mysterious.

Then there was the stairway with two tall magnolias next to the steps, and hidden in their branches some old statue that served as a pedestal. The garden terraces started at the foot of the stairway.

Following a path of reddish bricks, through a wrought-iron gate and some steps, the solitary little patios appeared, with myrtle and oleander surrounding a moss-covered well. And next to the well the trunk of a cypress whose top was lost in the luminous air.

In the surrounding silence, all that beauty came alive with a latent beating, as if the heart of people long gone, who once took pleasure in the garden, throbbed in waiting behind the thick branches. The incessant rumour of the water sounded like disappearing footsteps.

The sky was a clean, limpid  blue, glorious with light and colour. And on the horizon a grey and ochre tower rose up.

Later you understood that neither action nor pleasure could be lived to the perfection of those dreams by the side of the well. And the day you understood this sad reality, far away in a strange land, you wanted to return to that garden, sit again by the side of the well and dream of past youth.