Eva Colombo, Flowers and sea, seventh chapter: The dogdays’ vervain (
Inspired by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes painting Young girls by the sea, 1879 )
The sun went down and the moon will not rise. There will be no shadows tonight,
and it will be as if the time would not exist. The dogdays are here and the
sundial’s shadow is so dark and sharp that it looks like an obsidian knife which
goads the sun exasperating its ferocity and then wounding it to death. Now the
sun has fallen behind the horizon, the sky is tinged with the blood of the sun
and the twilight’s glow is as beautiful as someone who is dying to be born
again. Standing by the sea you stare at that reddish glow and you wish you could
grab it as if it were a precious stone, you wish you could trap it into the
snare of your hair so that your beauty could shine forever. But when the night
will extinguish the last embers of the twilight you will feel ashes scattered on
your hair and the burning tears which will slip on your cheeks will be the last
drops of water into a clepsydra. Then you will feel something near you.
Something fresh, something alive: vervain, the slender and hardy plant that
thrives on the sand. Looking closely at a tiny vervain flower you will notice
that it is like a star which bears the color of the dawn, and you will be aware
that Sirius is about to rise. And you will remember that you have seen the light
by the very sea where the Nile finds peace. You will remember that you have seen
the light when the star Sirius rises the waters of the Nile and on the fertile
silt as black as your eyes shines a grapevine which bears the same reddish glow
of your hair and the blood of the sun swells its grapes which will become a wine
as sweet as a lover’s voice. And you will hear that voice saying that you will
be forever beautiful like the twilight’s glow, like someone who is dying to be
born again. |
