Fabulae

Taxonomy

Taxonomy Language is only an instrument for the attainment of science, Jefferson wrote Marbois among the columns of names— Senna, snake-root, lupine, Cherokee plum. At Poplar Forest, he planted rows of scaly bark hickory, measured fisted buds of poke.  Random strokes and knots, scribbles of hair on the crushed, sweat-drenched linen of his wife’s pillow as she lay dying. Present occupations disable me from completing the Notes, he wrote. His fine fingers brushed dovetailed corners of coffin— his infant daughter’s. Outside, jasmine and wethawk in the marbled cold of spring sky. Royston crow, towhee, and the sting of Tarleton in the wide, shallow mouths of common salt near Monticello.  Nights he walked ragged, trampled rows of cabbage to the line of small shacks, yellow oil lamplight, a neighborhood of slaves. The spirit of the master is abating.  You can stand on a cliff before the heave and tear in Jefferson’s mountains, in the sublime, and not escape the awe. You can kneel above the abyss, two hundred and seventy feet of gouged rock, your back to silver grilles 8 of cars parked row on row in sun. Here the eye ultimately composes itself, Jefferson added later, much later—looking away to the plain, away from the arch that sprung as it were, up to heaven. 9 ...