In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

sprezzaTura To his book's end this last line he'd have placed: Jocund his muse was, but his life was chaste. -Robert Herrick, "To His Book's End" Here you are in an airport terminal, plastic rows of empty seats, when a man sits down exactly next to you, his forearm brushing your shoulder in relocation, the musk-red smell of him rising and settling on the nne hairs ofyour upper lip. It has begun, subtly. You are slightly incensed, the effrontery to notice you, sit close to your body in this place of transit, this fluorescent tube of comings-and-goings. You cannot look at him, but you know he is beautiful. It works your chariness. The man doesn't speak to you, doesn't stir in your direction: he is busy in his laptop, cuffs starchly encountering the keyboard. So, after a moment, you go back to reading Hesperides and Noble Numbers, alternatively. He is probably off to St. Louis, and you, to San Diego. Nevertheless, it has affected the diagonals ofyour face, the place you are woman, and it has become important for him to notice your good posture, the moist inner elbow, the freckled top ofyour hand. He must do nothing. Arrivals and departures crackle over your head, the fanned, stale air rustles your consideration of cleanJy wantonness, wild civili!!. All of this, a small everything, confuses an unknown dialogue in you: like the chinchilla, raised for its soft, pale coat, then taken from the cage to be the pet of a gentle Argentine. So this moment, gathering rosebuds, the gratuitous and the solemn, wandering between Scylla and Charybdis. And here, finally, you know why Robert Herrick separated his joie de vivre from his foreskin offering to Christ, his "Upon the Nipples ofJulia's Breast" from "To His Conscience"why he bound them all in onefat little octavo volume: nothing ends. No, nothingwill end. ...

Share