THis for the steep road the mind travels
when having, as Popper says, "problems and the urge
to solve them"; and the academy, as one arrives,
already is carved into camps of warring faction
for which the legionaries have long ago thrown up
high earthen walls impaled with sharpened stakes
of rhetoric, which they deem as pure induction
(provided it is their own and not another's):
find one place, each campus has one such,
that seems in quietude to fold into itself
a peace that stills the mind, even upon approach.
There go whenever you have need, and say
no word, but gather yourself in silence and new-build
whatever of good presents itself therein.
My own such place is called the "grotto;" it
contains several modern sculptures which
(I thank the architect) do not too much
obtrude, and one large well-made pool that fills
the colonnade with its inverted sky.
Striding in the pool, one bronze from a simpler
time, known as "Indian Maiden with Fawn,"
comments upon our easy scoffs as to
its demeaning romanticism by having no
politics of its own, and not minding
us as it neither minds the rain nor the sometime
sun. A small susurrant fount behind
the pool pours out between two cherubs playing
pipes; or rather one plays, the other has stopped
to listen, half smiling. I am not too young to linger here
alone on autumn days, finding, without knowing
that I do, the warmest angle in the red brick walls
to sit and offer my bones to the slowly sinking
sun. Undergrads and visitors pass,
by threes or more sometimes, but mostly twos,
strolling along the arched arcade,
and talking, always, in hushed
and reverent voice, as in a church of stones
and moss and ancient bits of colored glass.
I sit, a bronze, among these friends and lovers:
perhaps I have been here alone too long.
Some artist opportunely may have captioned
me: "Man in Search of Truth." So quaint!
I am like the maiden, out of my academic time
and fashion, but well-placed within these walls.
The visitors understand art, and know that it
is worship. They pass along the walk, half-smiling,
and some among them catch my silence as a song.